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THE STORY OF 
THE RAINBOW DIVISION 



THE STORY OF THE 
RAINBOW DIVISION 

BY 

RAYMOND S. TOMPKINS 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

MAJOR GENERAL CHARLES T. MENOHER 

COMMANDER OF THE RAINBOW DIVISION 
THROUGH ALL ITS FIGHTS 




BONI AND LIVERIGHT 

New York 1919 






Copyright, 1919, 
By Boni & Liveright, Inc. 



AU rights reserved 



* Jill 2b 1919 



Printed in the U. S. A. 



©CI.A52S348 



FOREWORD 

When the history of the recent world war has 
been analyzed, it will be found that the psycho- 
logical forces at work have been the most power- 
ful of all those called into exercise to save the 
world for democracy. VC1 ) S - 

The fact that the "Rainbow" Division was 
composed of elements of the National Guard 
selected from a majority of the states of the 
Union should have constituted an element of 
weakness ; should have made for lack of cohesion. 
If the idea of constituting a division in this way 
was a happy thought, the selection of the name 
"Rainbow" for this composite organization was 
an inspiration. I consider that the name in itself 
was perhaps the strongest asset the Division had. 
Instead of lack of cohesion; instead of an organ- 
ization made up of elements, each with local in- 
terests that might have been antagonistic, the 
Division constituted a complete, compact, cohe- 
sive, single unit which ran like a well oiled ma- 

v 



vi Foreword 

chine. Of course, it had a most excellent staff, 
which was headed by a most brilliant officer, Gen- 
eral MacArthur, and the Division was privi- 
leged to plume itself more or less on its excellent 
staff work. Yet I believe these desirable results 
would never have been arrived at without the 
name "Rainbow." 

It is an interesting fact that on the morning 
when the Division left the Baccarat Sector, after 
four months of intensive training in trench war- 
fare, to be thrown in in the Champagne to assist 
in checking this last desperate drive of the Ger- 
mans, a most beautiful rainbow appeared directly 
over the sector occupied by the Division. Again 
on the morning the Division became engaged on 
the Ourcq, another beautiful rainbow appeared 
directly over the point where contact was first 
gained. On at least one other occasion this same 
phenomenon appeared. 

When on the defensive as in the Champagne, 
resisting the desperate attempts of the Germans 
to break through, there never was any thought — 
it never entered into the calculations, that the 
Division might have to retire. In the same way 



Foreword vii 

when on the offensive, there was never any 
thought except that of going forward. 

To have commanded such a body of men 
throughout the entire time of its service against 
the enemy, of some nine months, was a privilege 
indeed. 

In this book the story of the Rainbow Divi- 
sion has been told accurately, fully and absorb- 
ingly. As nearly as it is possible to do so in a 
narrative that tells of the experiences of but one 
division, "The Story of the Rainbow" tells the 
story of America's part in the Great War. 




Major-General. 



CONTENTS 

Part One 

CHAPTEB PAOH 

I. The Rainbow Appears and Goes Over 

There 9 

II. Valley Forge Again; The First Smell 

of Battle 23 

III. The Rainbow's Story begins to be the 

Story of the War 28 

IV. America's Rainbow Turns the Tide in 

Last and Greatest Trench Battle: 
The Champagne-Marne Defensive . 44 
V. The Rainbow's First Attack — Across 

the Bloody Ourcq 70 

VI. And Speaking of Elsie Janis .... 9Q 
VII. With the First American Army in the 

Stroll through St. Mihiel . . . 102 
VIII. Through the Argonne to Sedan . . . 125 

Pari Two 

IX. On to Germany ........ 147 

X. Belgium Laughs Again 166 

XL So this is Germany 180 

XII. "Die Wacht am Rhein" 190 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTHB PAGB 

XIII. "The Conquering of the Highroad" . 198 

XIV. The Boche Unmasked 217 

XV. Castles on the Rhine 228 

Appendix 

I. Roster of Rainbow Division Officers at 

Camp Mills, in October, 1917 . . 233 
II. Roster of Rainbow Division Officers, 

Nov. 11, 1918 240 

III. Movements, Material Captured, Casual- 

ties 244 

IV. Citations and Commendations . . . 250 



PART I 



CHAPTER I 

THE RAINBOW APPEARS AND GOES OVER THERE 

On what day or with what evolutionary proc- 
ess the United States actually came to realize 
that it was at war may some time become a 
matter of much argument. 

Nobody, perhaps, will say that the realization 
came immediately upon our severance of diplo- 
matic relations with Germany. Some people 
may declare that it came with the start or the 
end of the first Liberty Loan campaign. Some 
may hold that it came with the publication of the 
first casualty list. 

But if the people in twenty-six States of the 
Union and the District of Columbia will hark 
back to the month of August, 1917, either by 
getting out the old newspapers of that month 
and hunting through them, or merely by testing 
their own recollections, they will come fairly 



10 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

close to settling that, getting down to brass tacks 
:(by which expression men distinguish the actual 
doing of a thing from the promise to themselves 
or their friends that they are going to do it), the 
United States actually got into the Great War 
on August 14, 1917. 

It was a story in the afternoon newspapers of 
that day that did it; a story saying that a division 
of American troops was to be formed from Na- 
tional Guard organizations in twenty-six States 
and the District of Columbia. It was to be or- 
ganized at once for immediate service overseas. 
It was to be named "The Rainbow Division." 

The nation was being called to arms! 

The names of the twenty-six States were 
printed. They were scattered States, not 
grouped together in any one section of the coun- 
try. They took in every section except New 
England. To serve in this combat division men 
were coming from as far west as California and 
Oregon and as far east as New York and Mary- 
land. The Washington correspondents who had 
grabbed the story from the War Department 
and flashed it red-hot all over the nation had 



Rainbow Appears and Goes Over There 11 

many glorious words to say about the fact that 
America's sons from the north and the south, the 
east and the west were at last going to fight side 
by side to make the world safe for democracy. 
America was sending a "Rainbow" of hope to 
Europe. 

So of course it thrilled the nation. The Na- 
tional Guard soldiers were the "home soldiers." 
Somebody in every little town belonged to the 
State organization. The girls all went to their 
dances and they always marched in the Decora- 
tion Day and Fourth of July parades and the 
armories were the scenes of every community's 
biggest "affairs." 

One American division had already gone, to 
France, but that was a division of "regulars." 
The news of their arrival and of General Per- 
shing's arrival, hazy, carefully censored news that 
it was, also had been thrilling, but the average 
American always thought of "regulars" as peo- 
ple apart; adventurous, wandering souls who 
lived in some sort of "post" out in the Indian 
country. They never thought of "regulars" in 
connection with "home." 



12 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

But they thought of this news of August 14 
in direct connection with "home," and that was 
what made the "Rainbow Division" announce- 
ment so important to the people who read the 
newspapers that day. The United States had 
declared war on April 6, but the meaning of war 
did not strike home until August 14. That was 
the day the birth of the Rainbow Division be- 
came news. Its organization actually dated from 
August 5, but the secret had been kept for nine 
days. 

By September 13, it was a husky, fully-clothed 
youth, waiting at Camp Albert L. Mills on Long 
Island, New York, for orders to sail. It had 
taken almost a full month to gather it together — 
simply to get the twenty-seven thousand men in 
one place, to say nothing of clothing them and 
equipping them. 

Camp Mills was a great tent-covered plain ad- 
joining the Mineola Aviation Field. It was a 
center of news interest to Americans everywhere, 
for it was one of the first great camps where 
American soldiers were gathering to go to war. 

All the men were volunteers. Many of them 



Rainbow Appears and Goes Over There 13 

were "rookies"; their uniforms were new and 
stiff-looking and they moved around awkwardly. 
For there had been hasty recruiting in some of 
the States to get the Rainbow together. They 
drilled, drilled, drilled — all day and every day, 
and though they were the pick of America's Na- 
tional Guard they were hounded and harried un- 
mercifully by the grizzled drilled sergeants of the 
regular army. So the broad drill field was a 
small world unto itself — a drilling, sweating, 
cursing little world, preparing to fight. 

But the Sundays and the holidays were the old 
traditional war days of gaiety and merry-making 
and sweet successions of leave-taking. Then the 
camp streets were thronged with friends and 
relatives of the men in the Rainbow Division. 
In automobiles they came from States fairly 
close at hand, and in special trains they poured 
in from distant cities. The old cavalry troop that 
the home-folks knew had become a military police 
outfit, and the old coast artillery company was 
now a trench-mortar battery known by some un- 
familiar number, but somehow the home-folks 
got to the right tents. 



14 The Story of the Mainbow Division 

Being unused to great armies they didn't all 
know what a "division" was, and they thought 
this one was called "The Rainbow" because there 
were so many different colored hat-cords on the 
campaign hats. Much as the giving of their own 
sons meant to them, the real significance of 
"Rainbow Division," when they finally learned 
it, made it mean more, somehow ; the thought of 
a great bow of hope bending over the nation from 
coast to coast. It was a well-chosen name, that 
"Rainbow." 

More than anything else this name made a 
wonderfully smooth machine out of the mixed-up 
mass of men who represented as many different 
American ideals, traditions and temperaments as 
they represented American commonwealths and 
communities. For instance, there were the old 
Fourth Alabama Infantry and the old 69th New 
York Infantry. These two regiments had 
fought against each other in the Civil War. 
They came to Camp Mills to join the Rainbow 
— the grandsons of the Civil War fighters — 
ready to carry on the North and South struggle 
where it had ended in the sixties. And they 



Rainbow Appears and Goes Over There, 15 

carried it on. The New York Irishmen and the 
Alabama cotton-planters fought each other all 
over Camp Mills. Hardly a day passed without 
seeing a pitched battle somewhere around the 
camp between the men of the 167th and the 
165th. 

Yet in every battle the Hainbow fought in the 
war, Alabama and New York fought side by 
side. 

National Guard infantrymen were to be the 
machine-gunners and they had come from three 
distinct sections of the nation. Four companies 
of the old Fourth Pennsylvania regiment made 
up the 149th machine-gun battalion, three com- 
panies of the Second Wisconsin made up the 
150th, and three companies of the Second Geor- 
gia were in the 151st. The three field artillery 
regiments came from Minnesota, Indiana and 
Illinois; the infantry from Ohio, New York, 
Iowa and Alabama; the engineers from North 
Carolina and California. 

And the ammunition train came from Kansas, 
the supply train from Texas, the signal troops 
from Missouri. The military policemen were 



16 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

from Virginia, the trench mortar battery men 
from Maryland, and both these outfits had left 
home as coast artillery. Men from New Jersey, 
Tennessee, Oklahoma and Michigan were to 
drive the Rainbow's ambulances, and men from 
the District of Columbia, Nebraska, Oregon and 
Colorado were to run the Field Hospitals. The 
Division Headquarters Troop was Louisiana 
cavalry. The Division Staff officers came from 
everywhere in the country. 

From every conceivable station and walk of 
life, from every heath and every sort of hearth 
in the nation they came to Camp Mills, and they 
buried every prejudice in an overwhelming love 
and loyalty for the name and spirit of "Rain- 
bow" as freshmen do for the name and spirit of 
their college. 

The Secretary of War and later the Vice- 
President of the United States reviewed the 
division before thousands of spectators. At 
nights officers and men were guests at big houses 
on Long Island. There were dances and garden- 
parties. And all the time quartermasters were 
struggling to get the men equipped and shipping 



Rainbow Appears and Goes Over There 17 

authorities were struggling to get ships to take 
them to France. Time was flying. The war 
was going on. The Germans seemed to be not 
weakening, but growing stronger. 

Toward the middle of October the dances and 
garden parties ceased. It became more and more 
difficult for the automobile tourists and special- 
train travelers to get into Camp Mills. And 
finally, on October 18, the Rainbow Division was 
gone. 

At two o'clock that morning, with no lights 
and no sound, the first column, consisting of the 
117th Trench Mortar Battery from Maryland, 
and the Second Battalion of the 166th Infantry 
from Ohio, moved to the train at Garden City, 
Long Island, then to the ferry at Long Island 
City and then to the docks at Hoboken. The 
other elements followed rapidly. By six p. m. 
the whole convoy of ships — the Covington, The 
President Lincoln, President Grant, Tenadores, 
Pastores and Mallory — anchored down the 
Hudson. 

Next morning land had disappeared, the open 



18 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

sea was all around them, the ships were bound 
for France. 

Submarines were still rampant at that time. 
The strictest caution was necessary. Officers 
and men with fresh memories of house-parties 
and the stirring music of bands on parade still 
ringing in their ears, began to know the hard- 
ships of war. In later days many, many thou- 
sands of American soldiers lived over again the 
life the Rainbow lived on the ocean, but in those 
days nobody knew what it was until they had 
tried it. Crowded like horses into narrow bunks, 
with the plainest of food, in total darkness at 
night, denied even the solace of a cigarette ex- 
cept by daylight, always having boat drills — it 
was the Rainbow Division's first test in stern 
discipline. 

About three days out the President Grant 
disappeared. The rumor spread from ship to 
ship that she had been torpedoed. She was 
carrying a whole infantry regiment, the 168th, 
from Iowa. But she had simply developed en- 
gine trouble and had gone back to port. 

The rest of the voyage was without incident, 



Rainbow Appears and Goes Over There, 19 

except that at daybreak on the last day of Octo- 
ber a wireless message reported a waiting fleet 
of submarines at the entrance to the Port of St. 
Nazaire, near Bell Isle. The course was changed 
and the danger avoided. And about dusk, Octo- 
ber 31, with the Tenadores leading and the Presi- 
dent Lincoln close behind, the Rainbow Division 
entered the port of St. Nazaire. 

Rain and a dreary looking mudhole for a town 
— that was the division's first impression of 
France. Some of the townspeople were there 
around the wharf to greet the American soldiers. 
The debarkation of a convoy of American troops 
was not a common occurrence then. Nor had 
the S. O. S. (the Service of Supplies) of that 
day achieved the efficiency it achieved later. The 
first convoy of the Rainbow Division was just 
seven days getting off the boats. It was assem- 
bled at Camp No. 1, about two miles outside of 
St. Nazaire. 

The unfavorable impression of Prance grew 
during the first few days, rather than diminished. 
It rained steadily. The mud was ankle deep. 
Stores and cafes charged extortionate prices. 



20 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

The collapse in Russia and the Italian reverses 
were announced. And America was thousands 
of miles away and the war bade fair to last four 
years. Then and there most of the Rainbow 
Division renounced expectations of ever going 
home again. They looked at the future grimly 
and with set teeth. 

Gradually the division left for training areas. 
The Artillery Brigade, made up of Illinois, In- 
diana and Minnesota troops, went to Coetquidan 
in Brittany, with the Ammunition Train, an all- 
Kansas outfit. The Trench Mortar Battery 
went to Langres; Division Headquarters and 
the Infantry went to the Vaucouleurs area. 

Vaucouleurs is in Lorraine, near Toul. It was 
from that village Joan of Arc started on her cru- 
sade for France. The Rainbow landed there in 
box cars after a long ride across the country, 
and were less impressed with the historical sig- 
nificance of their new billets than with the 
manure piles in all the front yards, by the height, 
breadth and odor of which French village citizens 
proclaim their worldly worth. French money 
[was a costly puzzle. French verbs eluded them 



Rainbow Appears and Goes Over There 21 

and they had terrible times buying eggs. The 
people were always kind, but politely uncertain 
of the ability of our untrained troops to stand 
against the Germans. But gradually the divi- 
sion adapted itself, novelties of the Old World 
became commonplace affairs, and the Rainbow 
got down to business. 

The training schedule began in earnest. It 
was the result of the experience of all the Allies, 
brought up to the minute. Officers and special- 
ists in one branch or another of the new warfare 
attended schools and the daily drill under the 
eyes of French and American instructors in- 
cluded artillery, machine-guns, rifles, pistols, 
trench-mortars and 37 millimeter-gun target 
practice ; bayonet and gas drill, digging trenches, 
building shelters and wire entanglements, roads 
and bridges ; visual and mechanical signaling and 
the art and science of liaison; maneuvers and 
terrain problems, disciplinary drill of many sorts, 
grenade throwing and marches. 

At Vaucouleurs the 165th Infantry — the old 
69th New York — and some smaller elements of 
the division which had not been in the first con- 



22 The Story of the Rainbow Division 
i 

voy joined the division. The men who had had 
to turn back on the President Grant caught up 
about December 12 in what was known as the 
LaFuche area, adjoining the Vaucouleurs area. 
They had come by way of Liverpool and Brest ; 
had seen how strictly the British were regulating 
food supplies and had been uproariously wel- 
comed in England. 

Christmas was drawing near. The Hainbow 
had now been almost two months in France. 
What would Christmas Day be? What was 
coming next and how soon? 

They got the answer just before Christmas 
Day, spent the jolly festival in packing up and 
getting ready to move, and the day after were 
on their way to the Bolampont area, about 100 
kilometers to the rear, on a hike that no Rainbow 
Division man who made it with his two feet will 
ever forget. 



CHAPTER II 

VALLEY FORGE AGAIN ; THE FIRST SMELL OF BATTLE 

Vaucouleurs was not the training area. in 
which the Rainbow Division belonged; it had 
been sent there because the military situation on 
the Western Front made necessary desperate 
speed in getting the newly arrived Americans 
somewhere and getting them there at once. The 
area intended for the Rainbow's training period 
was the Rolampont area and that was not at 
first ready to receive them. It was near the city 
of Langres and was known as the Seventh Train- 
ing Area. To Rolampont, then about 100 kilo- 
meters from Vaucouleurs, the division started on 
the day after Christmas. 

Always the men of the Rainbow will remem- 
ber that march as "The Valley Forge Hike." 

The supply system of the American Expedi- 
tionary Force was not then what it became in the 

23 



24 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

summer and fall of 1918, when whole corps could 
move forward in great attacks and scarcely ever 
lack for food and clothing except in the farthest 
lines of advance. The Rainbow Division started 
the hike to Rolampont with scarcely any shoes 
except what the men had on their feet ; there was 
no surplus supply to speak of. Some of the men 
had no overcoats. And they had barely started 
before a blizzard sprang up. 

They count the "Valley Forge Hike" as hav- 
ing lasted four days, though the start from Vau- 
couleurs was made fourteen days before that. 
They were four days going from Vaucouleurs to 
LaFuche, rested there about ten days and then 
started for Rolampont. The four days on the 
way to Rolampont was the "Valley Forge" part. 

They made most of the hike on sheer grit. 
Great drifts piled up under the sweeping winds, 
and in some places the snow lay flat three or four 
feet deep. The men were not hardened to long 
hikes even under fair conditions; they had not 
entirely straightened out the kinks of the cramp- 
ing ocean trip. 

Their shoes wore out — men were marching 



Valley Forge Again 25 

barefooted through the snow sometimes; they 
wrapped hags, around their feet and kept on. 
There were bloody tracks along the route of the 
column. At night they pulled up in some little 
village and slept — exhausted heaps of half- 
frozen men huddling together in barns and hay- 
lofts to keep warm. Some of them soaked their 
feet in buckets of icy water to draw out the frost. 

There was not much automobile transporta- 
tion in those first days, either ; only the Division 
Commander and the Brigade commanders had 
cars. The colonels of the regiments rode mules, 
but often one of them dismounted and let an 
exhausted man ride while he walked. 

The thermometer went below zero. Cases of 
mumps and pneumonia developed, and the sup- 
ply of ambulances was too small to carry the men 
to hospitals as rapidly as they became ill. In one 
regiment five hundred men were unable to keep 
on. 

But with that pride in the name and honor of 
"The Rainbow," and with what straining of 
nerve force only the men themselves know, the 
division came through. The hardships the men 



26 The. Story of the Rainbow Division 

endured during that period drew them together 
as nothing else had done ; and though in the string 
of battles that came later they faced terrific fire 
and fought ahead for days and nights without 
food or sleep, not a man who made it will ever 
forget the "Valley Forge Hike." 

It was just before New Year's Day, 1918, 
when they reached the Rolampont area. There 
the Rainbow settled down to have its equipment 
completed, get the finishing touches to its train- 
ing, and await orders to go into the trenches. 

General Mann was succeeded here as Division 
Commander by Major-General Charles T. 
Menoher. As the division thawed out and got 
clothes and shoes and fighting equipment, its 
confidence grew. The future was shaping up 
now, growing plainer; there was fighting ahead, 
that was certain, but they wanted to fight. They 
were eager to get up there on the line. They 
looked around them at this new bit of rural 
France with its poor dwellings, its toy-engines 
and railroad coaches and its general air of pov- 
erty, and thought (expressed it, too), "The Ger- 
mans can't be so good or they'd have licked the 



Valley Forge Again 27 

French long ago." Later they realized that there 
was a deeply valorous spirit behind these out- 
ward things of France and odious comparisons 
between France's ancient oddities and America's 
modern greatness were forgotten in sheer ad- 
miration of the fine bravery of France's soldiers. 
Then, on February 15, 1918, came the orders 
to go to the front. The preliminaries were over. 
For the Rainbow the war was about to begin. 
On February 16 the division entrained and rolled 
northward, toward the Luneville Sector in Lor- 
raine. From that direction came the smell of 
battle. 



CHAPTER III 

THE RAINBOW'S STORY BEGINS TO BE THE STORY 
OF THE WAR 

It was the day before the birthday of George 
Washington that the Rainbow Division finished 
detraining within marching distance of the 
trenches in the Luneville Sector — about 10 miles 
back. The Sixty-seventh Artillery Brigade, Na- 
tional Guard artillerymen from Indiana, Illinois 
and Minnesota, had finished shooting at targets 
around Coetquidan and had caught up. 

Luneville was the "quiet sector" the War De- 
partment was telling the people about back 
home. Actually there had been no fighting there 
since 1914, when the Germans had reached Ram- 
bervillers, destroyed the villages and withdrawn. 
A rolling, wooded, rich country was this part of 
Lorraine — altogether too beautiful to be the 
scene of battle. And by a sort of tacit agreement 

28 



The Bairibow's Story 29 

both Germans and French had been sparing the 
villages; neither side used gas, and in the day- 
time a shot was seldom heard. 

With the arrival of the Rainbow Division 
things changed. 

They went into the trenches quietly enough. 
The First Division, when it had entered the line 
previously in a nearby sector, had aroused the 
suspicions of the Germans and brought down on 
their own heads a deadly burst of fire, and a raid 
in which they had lost prisoners. Profiting by 
the First's experience the Rainbow sneaked into 
position and took up its vigil over No-Man's- 
Land in the night without the knowledge of the 
Germans and without losing a single man. 

But a new foe was facing the Boche in Lor- 
raine — a youthful, eager foe, confident of his 
untried strength and impetuous to use it. And 
he knew there were a hundred million people 
back home wondering how he would use it and 
how he was getting along. So the Germans 
were not long without knowledge of the change 
in their enemy's order of battle. 

It was many weeks later that there went 



80 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

abroad the story about the Germans who came 
out of their trench to wash some clothes in a 
shell-hole in No-Man's-Land, in full sight of 
the Americans. It was a true story, and it hap- 
pened during the Rainbow Division's first few 
days in the trenches, and Alabamians in the 167th 
Infantry were the heroes of it. 

The Germans had washed clothes in that shell- 
hole before and nothing had happened. They 
had known that nothing would happen. On their 
side the French had peacefully smoked their 
pipes in the cool of the evening on the very top 
of the trenches. It was simply one of the work- 
ings out of the tacit agreement. 

But a little outpost of Alabamians got one 
glimpse of this group of Boche in undershirts 
arrogantly dipping dirty clothes in the water of 
No-Man's-Land, and they opened fire. The 
Germans scattered like rabbits, some of them 
hugging wounds. 

A French officer came rushing to the outpost 
in a fury of excitement. What did the Ameri- 
cans mean? They had done a terrible thing! 
Now the Germans would be angry and every- 



The Rainbow's Story 31 

body was in for a period of shelling and gas and 
raids! He rebuked the hot-headed Yanks 
sternly. 

"What the hell?" said one of the men later. 
"I came out here to kill these Boche, not to sit 
here and watch 'em wash clothes." 

But there was justice in the French officer's 
rebuke. The Rainbow Division was the pupil of 
the French Army. Going into the line it had 
been divided into small units and brigaded with 
four French Divisions of the Seventh French 
Corps. This is the way it was divided : 

The 165th from New York plus two com- 
panies of the 150th Machine-Gun Battalion from 
Wisconsin were with the 164th French Infantry 
Division, with their front line in the Foret de 
Parroy. The 166th Infantry from Ohio plus 
the other two companies of the 150th Machine- 
Gun Battalion were in the St. Clement sector 
with the 14th French Division. The 168th In- 
fantry from Iowa, 167th from Alabama, and 
the 151st Machine- Gun Battalion from Georgia 
were in the Baccarat sector with the 128th 
French Division. The rest of the Rainbow units 



32 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

were distributed along the front of the Seventh 
French Corps, where they could be of most use 
and get the most experience. 

The irate French officer had been right, too, 
in his estimate of the result of the Alabamians' 
rashness. The tacit agreement for a kid-glove 
war in Lorraine went somewhat to pieces from 
that moment. The Germans knew now that new 
American troops were just across the way. They 
didn't have to depend upon instinct to prove it. 
They could see the men and the uniforms, just 
as our men could see the Germans, so close to- 
gether were the trenches in some places. It was 
enough. 

At four o'clock on the morning of March 5 
the Boche came over, and the men of the Rain- 
bow had their first battle. 

For several minutes the German batteries 
poured a rain of shells on every trench and every 
known position from which the Americans might 
fire back. They counter-batteried the artillery; 
their 77s cut the protecting barbed-wire to pieces. 
They dropped a barrage behind the trenches to 
cut off both retreat and reinforcements. They 



The Rainbow's Story 33 

were certain that all the green Americans who 
did not die of fright would be either killed by 
the fire or captured by the picked German 
raiders, who now came across behind the barrage 
about a hundred strong with ready bayonets. 

The Americans were green — they were not 
veterans and they didn't act like veterans. They 
were horribly scared, too. But they were also 
at that moment the most alert and desperate 
bunch of young lowans in the world. 

The spot toward which the raid was directed 
was a little group of ruined brick buildings just 
north of Badonvillers, known as Le Chamois 
Farm. The 168th Infantry was holding it. It 
was right at the junction of two valleys, an ideal 
place to sneak upon, but a death trap if properly 
defended. 

What it took to defend it properly the lowans 
were all broken out with. Within one minute 
after the first alarm they opened up down the 
valley with their rifles, the Marylanders cut loose 
with trench-mortars, and the Georgians turned 
on the machine-guns. It was their first chance 
to fire and they were as vivacious about it as 



34 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

debutantes at a coming-out ball. The field artil- 
lery, French and American, joined it. Dumb- 
founded and maddened at the resistance, the 
Germans tried to rush the trenches, but they got 
not even to the first line. Dawn, breaking slowly 
through the mist and smoke, showed three bodies 
in field-gray hanging grotesquely over the torn 
wire. 

One officer and eighteen men of the Rainbow 
were killed in this, the first little battle, and 
twenty-two wounded. But it was a victory; the 
raid had been repulsed. No Man's Land was 
strewn with German dead. 

The spirit of the Division took a great leap. 
It had discovered for itself one of the biggest 
truths the war produced — that the American 
doughboy could lick the Boche. Their French 
comrades were likewise enthused and reassured. 
The Rainbow's first batch of Croix de Guerres 
were awarded for bravery in this brush. 

Four days later, March 9, the Rainbow par- 
ticipated in a raiding party of its own, assisted 
by the French. For four hours American light 
and heavy artillery, trench-artillery and machine- 



The Rainbow's Story 35 

guns beat upon the German first and second lines, 
and at five-thirty p. m. French and American 
soldiers went over the top together, destroyed 
the German shelters, captured a few prisoners, 
and returned with slight losses. Colonel Doug- 
las MacArthur, the Chief -of -Staff, captured one 
of these prisoners. He had gone over the top in 
a doughboy's uniform and held a Boche up with 
his .45. The French gave him the Croix de 
Guerre for it. 

On March 17, in the woods called Rouge 
Bouquet, in the Foret de Parroy, immortalized 
in one of the late Sergeant Joyce Kilmer's poems 
of the war, two officers and 50 men from the first 
battalion of the 165th fought the Germans out of 
a strong point and destroyed it. Four New 
Yorkers were killed, three wounded, and one re- 
ported missing. Twenty Croix de Guerres came 
to the 165th for that bit of work. They took the 
German trench and held it, the first permanent 
gain ever made by American troops in France. 

By this time the Rainbow had been holding a 
front-line sector for almost a month. It had 
earned a rest; it was ordered to take one. And 



36 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

it has been suggested since that the title of the 
Rainbow Division's story ought to be 'Rests We 
Never Got." 

From that time on it never had a rest, as other 
divisions came to know the term. Rest after rest 
ordered for it, but the war always cancelled the 
orders. Once, on August 20, it went into inten- 
sive training around Bourmont, south of Neuf- 
chateau, for ten days, but it didn't rest. 

And here, coming out of the Luneville sector 
on March 20 and being concentrated by March 
23 near Gerbervillers, about 15 miles behind the 
line, prepared to march leisurely back to Rolam- 
pont, it got orders to stop. 

The great German offensive of March 21 had 
begun. For two days every German gun from 
the North Sea to the Swiss border had fired 
steadily on towns, roads, batteries, posts of com- 
mand. Then had come the news of the German 
break- through before Amiens. 

The Rainbow Division turned around and 
marched back to the front, and from that mo- 
ment its history is the history of the war. 

To begin with, it figured in the complete 



The Rainbow's Story 37 

change of the Allies' military policy. The men- 
ace to Amiens had produced Marshal Foch as 
Supreme Allied Commander. General Pershing 
had made his historic offer to Marshal Foch — 
the use of the whole American Army to handle 
as he wished. All previous plans were dropped, 
and in order to release the 128th French Division 
to go to the Somme, the Rainbow was ordered to 
take over the Baccarat Sector. Thus came to 
the Rainbow the honor of being the first Ameri- 
can division to occupy a divisional sector all its 
own, under its own commander. Command of 
the Baccarat sector passed to Major-General 
Menoher on March 31. 

All through April there were raids and pa- 
trols, but nothing unusual happened. The Ger- 
mans were not trying to break through here; 
their effort was concentrated much further to 
the north and west, and the Rainbow Division, 
with a month of trench vigil already to its credit, 
was content to take what rest it could. The 
weather grew warm and sunny, the military out- 
look on the Somme improved, the men began to 
feel at home in the trenches. 



38 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

They busied themselves improving all the de- 
fensive works of the sector, and completing their 
training. Every man was given an opportunity 
to become proficient in his own fighting specialty, 
whether that was stringing telephone wires, dig- 
ging trenches, sniping, hauling ammunition, ob- 
serving artillery fire, or cooking army rations. 
Gradually the Rainbow Division began to find 
itself; slowly, with the budding of spring, it be- 
gan to "feel its oats," and by the beginning of 
May it passed that famous point where it "could 
be pushed just so fur and no fu'ther." Fights 
just burst right out of it. 

There was a beautiful little forest called the 
Bois de Chiens near Ancerviller. It was full of 
Boche. They had made an apparently impreg- 
nable position of it, filling it with networks of 
wire and concrete trenches and blockhouses con- 
cealing minewerf er, machine-guns and the deadly 
77's. The whole thing was covered with dense 
forest and commanded the open level ground on 
three sides. 

Into this stronghold, on May 2, French and 
American artillery poured a destructive fire, 



The Rainbow's Story 39 

which continued until dusk of the next day. At 
that time the Third Battalion of the 166th In- 
fantry, an Ohio regiment, penetrated the entire 
salient under command of Major Henderson, 
with virtually no losses. A "go-and-come raid," 
they called it. The raiders found the Forest of 
Oaks completely destroyed. Its trenches were 
filled, all works above ground leveled, wire en- 
tirely torn down, and the forest itself turned into 
almost a bare field. 

Two mornings later, May 5, Lieut. Cassidy 
of the 165th led a party over and sneaked around 
behind a German outpost at Hameau d'Ancer- 
viller. They jumped on the Germans, killed two 
and captured four. Sergeant O'Leary made one 
resisting German his own special prize. While 
O'Leary was killing him with a trench-knife, 
Lieut. Cassidy held up two others with his pistol. 
They brought the prisoners back across No- 
Man's-Land under heavy machine-gun fire. 
Lieut. Cassidy was made a captain before the 
war ended, and was twice wounded. Sergeant 
O'Leary was killed in battle on the Ourcq. 

Three Alabama snipers brought on another 



40 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

mixed fight on May 12, when they went out in 
broad daylight to see if their new camouflage 
suits would camouflage. They lay in front of a 
dugout and when Germans began filing out they 
began firing as fast as they could load and pull. 
Almost immediately the Germans came rushing 
out in such great numbers that the Alabamians 
would have been overwhelmed if they hadn't 
started a retreat. Two got back safely ; the third 
was missing. 

"Let's go get him!" said the Southerners, so a 
party of about a dozen went over the top. They 
found No-Man's-Land full of Germans waiting 
for them in the tall grass. Greatly outnumbered, 
the Alabamians exchanged shots with them for a 
few minutes, and more Germans came out, until 
there were more than a hundred. So the rescue 
party, too, retreated, while one man with an auto- 
matic rifle lay in a shell-hole holding the Ger- 
mans back from the chase with a steady stream 
of bullets. And when the Alabamians got into 
their own trenches, instead of one man missing, 
there were two. The automatic rifleman hadn't 
come back. 



The Rainbow's Story 41 

Two snipers' private little hunting party bade 
fair now to become a pitched battle. The blood 
of the Alabama mountain men was up. Lieut. 
Breeding, who, they say, was a full-blooded 
Indian, gathered nearly a whole platoon and 
went out to wipe the Bodies up, and bring back 
both the Americans. Now crawling, now dash- 
ing forward, whooping and yelling as they came, 
Breeding's men fell upon the Germans and 
routed them. Whenever they could they used 
the bayonet, and they killed seven Germans and 
wounded many more, without a single casualty 
to themselves. 

And they brought back the automatic rifle- 
man, but the missing sniper they never found. 
In his place they brought one dead German, 
whom they hung over the wire as a challenge, 
guarding him constantly until the division came 
out leaving him there — a skeleton in rotted, 
bullet-torn field gray. 

Thus the Bainbow again took the "quiet" out 
of the "quiet sector." The Germans retaliated 
with deluges of gas and with raids. On the night 
of May 28-27, they launched a projector attack 



42 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

on the Village Negre, northeast of Badonviller. 
Seven hundred gas-shells of large caliber de- 
scended all at once and without warning upon 
the Rainbow along a front of about four hundred 
meters. It caught the Iowa infantry by surprise 
and the high concentration of deadly gas killed 
and disabled two hundred and fifty-one officers 
and men. Simultaneously the Boches laid down 
an artillery barrage and attempted to raid the 
trenches, but were repulsed. 

Two nights later they tried the same thing, 
but this time the Rainbow was ready. It had 
improved its gas discipline and its losses were 
only fifty-three officers and men. 

Then came rumors of a great German offen- 
sive in Lorraine. The bivouac of a battalion of 
storm troops was discovered on the Rainbow's 
front and promptly destroyed by artillery. De- 
fensive works were strengthened and every night 
the entire command prepared to receive the at- 
tack, determind to beat it back. But it never 
came. 

Another relief order arrived. Again the Rain- 
bow Division's thoughts were directed backward 



The Rainbow's Story 43 

toward the quiet rest area, where it could browse 
around peacefully for a few weeks and sleep at 
night and get cleaned up. 

The order was received at division headquar- 
ters at Baccarat on June 19. By June 21 the 
Rainbow was out of the trenches, leaving the 61st 
French Division and the 77th American National 
Army Division from New York to hold the Bac- 
carat sector, and it was concentrated between 
Rambervillers and Charmes, ready to start again 
for Rolampont. It had been holding the line for 
three full months, and that record for continuous 
duty was neither broken nor approached by any 
other American division throughout the war. At 
last (thought everybody) the long-deferred rest 
was in sight. That, to repeat, was June 21. 

On June 11 the Rainbow Division was entrain- 
ing, not fo:* Rolampont, but for another part of 
the front. The blood-red pen of war history was 
moving too fast for American soldiers to rest. 



CHAPTER rtf 

America's rainbow turns the tide in last and 
greatest trench battle: the cham- 
pagne-marne defensive 

He was a dirty, unshaven German sergeant 
and he stood pale and nerve-shaken before a 
French intelligence officer in a candle-lighted 
dugout deep in the chalk-white soil of the Cham- 
pagne country. It was like shimmering gray silk 
now, though — that soil — for night had come, the 
night of July 14, 1918, and the plains were 
bathed in warm moonlight and the clear sky 
studded with stars. 

A little French raiding party had brought him 
in; one of those fearless patrols of veteran polltis, 
wary as deer, cunning as panthers, who stole in 
and snatched and were away with their quarry 
in the twitch of a trigger-finger. A picked pa- 
trol it was on this night — picked from the best 

44 



Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 45 

because its mission must not fail. The German 
attack was at hand. Gouraud had said it and 
Gouraud knew. He had felt before the first of 
July that it was coming; by the fifth he had 
known it for a certainty. And the fourteenth 
was French Independence Day and Gouraud 
knew the German logic. 

"They will all be drunk," so the one-armed 
French hero of the Dardanelles and commander 
of the Fourth French Army guessed the German 
estimate of France's readiness. "They will all be 
drunk with celebrating and we will kill them 
where they lie." 

Surprise, complete unreadiness — that was the 
German's desperate hope; their highest card — 
and their last. General Gouraud's troops in the 
Champagne before Chalons-sur-Marne could ex- 
pect to drink deep to Bastille Day with perfect 
safety, for a German attack there, they might 
well think, would be madness. The opposing 
lines had been virtually stationary there since 
1914. Before Chalons from the Argonne to 
Rheims the Allies' trench systems were five miles 
deep, with great dugouts and vast wire fields. It 



46 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

was perhaps the most perfectly organized defen- 
sive position on the whole western front. Yes 
(thought von Hindenburg), the French will ex- 
pect to be safe there on the fourteenth of July, 
1918 — safe and drunk! 

They had failed at Chateau-Thierry. The 
Marne salient to that point did not afford ma- 
neuver room for another major German offen- 
sive. Wave after wave of smashing attack the 
Hun had hurled against Verdun on the right and 
Rheims on the left and they had all been futile. 
They had tried to widen on their right in the di- 
rection of Compiegne and Montdidier, but there 
the Allied armies were known to have concen- 
trated their reserves. What, then, beside these 
things and the probability of surprise, moved the 
German high command to plan a drive on Cha- 
lons through five miles of defenses ? 

This: that their lines of communication were 
shorter and superior; that they could operate on 
a straight line while the Allied reserves could 
come from north of Paris to Chalons only around 
the Marne salient via Vitry-le-Francois, and that 
Chalons once taken, a jumping-ofF point for the 



Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 47 

next drive on Paris could be chosen at will. But 
above all, surprise. 

The candles in the dugout flickered with the 
vital intensity of the moment it seemed, but prob- 
ably it was only with the throb of a gun begin- 
ning the ordinary night harassing. The intelli- 
gence officer put his question bluntly, almost 
carelessly. When, he wanted to know, would 
this attack come? 

"Tonight," said the German sergeant. 

"Eh bien — and at what hour would the bar- 
rage begin?" 

"At twelve o'clock," the German sergeant an- 
swered. They took him off toward Chalons to a 
prison pen to paint "P. G." on his back. And 
the intelligence officer whispered over the wires 
a word and a number — "Francois, one-four-O !" 
Men in deep holes in the ground throughout miles 
of the Champagne's chalky desert caught it up 
and passed it on — "Francois, one-four-O" — and 
it went out, farther and farther toward the Ger- 
man lines, and stopped where the things it her- 
alded would begin — in the dugouts of the French 
sacrifice companies. 



48 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

There was nothing now between those com- 
panies and death but a few hours' sleep and a 
few minutes of hand-to-hand fighting. It was 
the code-signal that the night of the German 
attack had come. 

In five minutes (and it was then but a little 
after dark) the whole Fourth French Army 
knew it and was ready, Americans and all. 

And the whole Fourth French Army heard 
again Gouraud's call of the week before : "None 
will look behind ; none will give way. Kill them ; 
kill them in abundance until they have had 
enough." 

The Americans were the men of the Rainbow 
Division. Coming out of the Baccarat sector on 
June 21, "for a rest," they had instead moved by 
rail to Camp de Chalons with headquarters at 
Vadenay Farm in the Champagne area, for spe- 
cial training. They had landed there June 29, 
and were about to carry out a minor operation 
near Chatillon-sur-Marne when Marshal Foch, 
learning of the German plan against Chalons, 
again availed himself of General Pershing's of- 
fer, and looked about for one high-spirited, hard- 



Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 49 

fighting American Division. By the first of July 
the Rainbow, a five-months-old American war- 
baby, was a part — the only American part — of 
Gouraud's plan of defense. By the tenth it and 
all the French divisions with it were in their 
places before Chalons. 

It was a novel plan of defense; elastic is the 
one word that best describes it. It was the great- 
est and most successful of plans for the defense 
of an old-time trench system; for as this proved 
to be the last of the great trench battles of the 
war, so also was it the fiercest and most decisive. 
The most threatening advance on Paris had been 
stopped earlier in the summer but that Allied 
success had not broken the German power of 
large-scale offensives. 

Gouraud had abandoned his first-line system 
and turned it into a mass of death traps. No 
soldiers were there except the handful of French 
men in sacrifice companies prepared to face cer- 
tain death for the sake of keeping the Germans 
fooled into believing that the signal flares and 
rockets they sent up by night and their own vis- 
ible movements by day meant that the first line 



50 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

was full of troops. Armed with machine guns, 
they were to wait there, first in deep dugouts 
while the bombardment went on, then in the midst 
of labyrinths of wire so thick that they could not 
get out and no one else could get in, and they 
were to delay the German advance and separate 
the German infantry from the German barrage, 
until overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. 

At sunset the evening before the attack they 
were pitching horseshoes inside their barbed-wire 
backyards. 

So all the German bombardment on the first 
lines by trench-artillery and minenwerfer would 
be time, labor and ammunition wasted. 

For his first real infantry defense Gouraud 
had moved his troops back to the intermediate 
line, about three miles from the German posi- 
tions. On the extreme left, just south of Au- 
berive-sur-Suippes, were the third and second 
battalions of the 165th Infantry, all New York- 
ers, and the third battalion, 166th, from Ohio, and 
on the extreme right, northeast of Souain, were 
Alabamians of the second battalion, 167th In- 
fantry, and lowans of the second battalion, 168th 



'Americas Rainbow Turns ike Tide 51 

Infantry. Between the Alabamians and the 
New Yorkers ran the ancient Roman road to 
Chalons- sur-Marne. They were the guardians 
of the pass. 

In the second line from left to right five miles 
from the German positions were the 117th Engi- 
neers from California and South Carolina ready 
to fight as infantry; first battalion, 165th Infan- 
try; first and second battalions, 166th Infantry; 
first and third battalions, 167th Infantry, and 
first and third battalions, 168th Infantry. Min- 
gled with them were French soldiers of the 170th 
Division on the left and the 13th Division on the 
right. The Rainbow had been brigaded with 
two French Infantry Divisions. 

The Rainbow artillery was likewise brigaded 
with the French, Col. Leach with the 151st Field 
Artillery from Minnesota being on the right in 
support of the second position, and Col. Riley 
with the 149th from Illinois on the left. Of the 
150th artillery regiment from Indiana under Col. 
Tyndall, one battalion was on the right and two 
on the left. 

The farthest advanced American unit in the 



52 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

battle system was the 117th Trench-Mortar Bat- 
tery from Maryland. It was out beyond the in- 
termediate line on the right, charged with the 
duty of delaying the German advance with show- 
ers of bombs. 

Back of the second line were shelters filled to 
bursting with animals and transportation, and 
around and behind them was artillery of all cali- 
bers with great heaps of ammunition. The gun- 
ners were sleeping by the guns. Still farther 
back were ammunition and supply dumps, hos- 
pitals (a big one at Bussy-le-Chateau), and at 
Vadenay Farm was Headquarters of the Rain- 
bow Division, with General Menoher in com- 
mand and Col. MacArthur chief of staff. Be- 
hind all these, twenty miles away from the Ger- 
man lines — the prize the Hun sought on this 
clear, warm, moonlight night of July 14, 1918 — 
stood the city of Chalons-sur-Marne, a black blot 
on the ghost-gray plains of the Champagne, 
lightless and silent. 

Silent but for the occasional boom of a gun 
and crash of a shell, now behind the German 
lines, now behind the Allied lines. Just an ordi- 



Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 53 

nary night; harassing fire to keep them stirred 
up around the batteries and dumps and picket 
lines so that they'd know you were still there and 
still living. Here and there an occasional rifle- 
shot. Now and then a rocket like the Earth 
throwing a fiery kiss to the Moon. No aero- 
planes, no bombs falling; just soft moonlight, 
gentle breezes and the faint throb of cannon, like 
the War-god breathing spasmodically in his 
sleep. 

General Gouraud began his barrage at eleven 
o'clock. Until November 1, during the Argonne- 
Meuse offensive, that chorus of guns held the 
Allied record for volume of sound and devastat- 
ing effect. It was timed to coincide with the 
probable massing of the German armies for the 
attack, or at least with the manning of the Ger- 
man artillery for the preliminary bombardment. 

It paled the clear light of the moon ; where the 
guns were the horizon was red as sunset with 
their muzzle flashes — over the German lines and 
rear areas the sky flamed with shell explosions. 
The Rainbow men with nothing in their war ex- 
perience except the desultory cannonading of the 



54 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Baccarat sector came out of dugouts and ele- 
phant-backs to watch the spectacle. When they 
shouted to one another, "Great sight, ain't it?" 
they had to shout through cupped hands directly 
in a comrade's ear. 

They stood there feeling a little sorry for the 
enemy who had to endure such punishment; but 
exultant to think in what a terrible mess his plans 
for the night's work must be — artillery smashed 
before it could get under way, storm troops de- 
moralized, ammunition dumps going up. And 
while they thought these things the world went 
suddenly mad beneath their feet and hideous 
death ran rampant over every foot of ground. 

Midnight had come an hour earlier to the Ger- 
mans than it had to the Allies. They had for- 
gotten that, some of them. And some of them 
recalled it too late. It was five minutes past 
twelve. 

On a front of forty-two miles the German 
barrage fell like a blanket. Like an avalanche 
it swept upon the Allied positions and enveloped 
them all everywhere and at once. It was not a 
fugue chorus with one gun beginning and others 



(America's Rainbow Turns the Tide 55 

coming in a few at a time ; one wire or one button 
seemed to have started them all. 

For most of the soldiers at their dugout doors 
watching their own barrage with pleasurable awe 
there was but one move possible — a dive like a 
"slide to second," into the nearest hole in the 
ground. And not even that always saved them. 
There was death and destruction in the very air; 
it seemed to be reaching out with hungry, clutch- 
ing hands, sweeping victims in; the sky swished 
and swirled like a hurricane, bringing a rain that 
burst with a red crash when it landed, and the 
clean night breeze became a deadly draft of poi- 
sonous gas. 

It dwarfed the French- American barrage in 
sound; swallowed it up like a shark swallowing 
a sea-bass. For years to come Americans who 
lived under it will shake their heads and fail for 
words when you talk of the first part of that 
night in the Champagne. Only the first Ger- 
man offensive on the Somme in 1918 rivaled that 
bombardment; the attack on Verdun in 1916, 
compared to it, was mere harassing. 

It continued without abatement until four 



56 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

o'clock in the morning. Then it seemed to lift for 
a moment, to lessen in violence. The German in- 
fantry was coming, six first-class divisions 
strong, in the first assault ; a Guard Cavalry Di- 
vision, the Second Bavarian Division, the 88th, 
the First, the Seventh and the First Bavarians. 
They had just come up after two weeks' rest* 
previous to which they had held this same sector 
and studied every foot of the ground. Of the 
six, one was attacking the left where the New 
■Yorkers and Ohioans were ; three were attacking 
the center held entirely by the French, and two 
were on the right to drive back the Alabamians 
and Iowans. 

They were the pick of General von Einem's 
Third Army and for all the demoralizing effect 
of the Allied fire, which had started before 
theirs and continued with scarcely lessened vigor, 
they came on across No-Man's-Land in superb 
form. They were Prussians, most of them, and 
it was a Prussian boast that no troops could at- 
tack in such close formation as theirs. 

But the Allied front line was deserted. Eager 
to come to a stand-up fight, the Germans kept 



1 Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 57 

on and on, and found nobody to fight ; nothing 
but mines that roared up beneath their feet, and 
thick gas clouds and shells tearing great holes in 
their ranks. And in little torn forests of wire the 
men of the French sacrifice companies now came 
out of their holes like small swarms of angry bees 
and stung them with bursts of machine-gun fire. 

And now, too, Gouraud called another bit of 
strategy into play; orders to fire came to gun- 
ners who had been out of range of the German 
artillery when the bombardment had started, 
but who were now within range of the advancing 
German infantry. Direct hits from high explo- 
sive shells began piling into the German attack- 
ers. But still they kept on, thousands more 
climbing over heaps of bodies to fill the gaps. 
And finally, by sheer disregard of losses, they 
came to the intermediate line — the Allies' first 
real line of defense. 

It may never be accurately known whether the 
Germans reached the left or the right of the line 
first, and it makes little difference since they 
gained no more at one side than they did at the 
other. But it is fairly certain that they came in 



58 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

greater force at the right because just in front 
of the Alabamians and lowans were the splin- 
tered tree-trunks of what had been a small forest, 
offering protection of a sort to the advance on 
that wing. Trouble had been expected there. 

The second battalion of the 167th had had no 
shelter during the German bombardment except 
what the trenches afforded, which was almost no 
shelter at all. But the men had been spread out 
thinly, and shells when they were direct hits on 
the parapets did a minimum of damage. Morale, 
sky-high before midnight with Gouraud's stir- 
ring words and the sense of the greatness of it 
all, had slumped a bit under the terrible German 
fire, but now that that was over it mounted again 
with a leap. The "Wild Men from Alabama" 
were ready. 

They were in four companies, G and H on the 
right of the Chalons road, commanded by Cap- 
tain Thomas F. Goerg and Captain Herman W. 
Thompson, and E and F on the left of the road 
commanded by Lieutenant Raymond It. Brown 
and Captain Frederick L. Wyatt. The com- 
mander of the Second Battalion was Captain 



Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide. 5ft 

Everett H. Jackson. The position took in the 
crests of two gentle slopes with a little valley 
between, and the slopes were strewn with old 
tree-stumps and scrubby little pines. 

Some man in G Company saw the Germans 
first; he had crawled up to watch them coming 
and he saw one particular Boche before he saw 
the others. He was a monstrous big fellow, 
walking almost upright. "Good Gawd!" 
chuckled the Alabama man. "Look at the size o' 
that guy, will you? Ah'm gon' to get him right 
now!" 

He did, and when his rifle cracked the Ameri- 
cans opened up all along the right of the line. 
All the Germans who could dropped into com- 
municating trenches and continued sneaking for- 
ward under cover. From then on no American 
in that part of the fight remembers very clearly 
what happened, except in his own particular 
little patch of ground. Then and there the Bat- 
tle of the Champagne became a rough-arid- 
tumble fight with bare knives — man against man; 
with knives, fists, teeth and rifle-butts. 

The Germans, expecting, as orders on cap- 



|60 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

tured prisoners showed, to reach the town of 
Suippes by noon of July 15, and Chalons by four 
o'clock of the next day, ran into a stabbing affray 
within the first few minutes. That is what it was 
in the Alabama trenches — a tremendous stabbing 
affray, with men cutting and slashing and jab- 
bing at each other; with no time to gloat or to be 
sorry over a victim or to rest, because there was 
more killing to do. In the Baccarat sector the 
1 67th had started a reputation for wild, unrea- 
soning courage ; in the Battle of the Champagne 
they completed it. 

In one of those faded little field-messages, 
scribbled with a stub of hard pencil with scarcely 
any point, Capt. Julien M. Strassberger, com- 
manding the 167th's machine-gun company, sup- 
porting Companies E and F, wrote at eight- 
thirty a.m., and sent it to the Battalion Com- 
mander. 

"Boche dead piled around here sky-high. lis 
ne passer ont pas!" 

But the fate of the right of the line began to 
hang in the balance. German tanks had been 
able to get up here and the Allied artillery was 



Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 61 

not having the destructive effect that it had in 
the center and on the left. The Maryland 
Trench-Mortar Battery, manning their little 
guns out there on ground the Boche was now 
crossing, had fired seven hundred and fifty bombs 
during the morning, scoring direct hits on four 
tanks and putting them out of action. Seven 
more tanks had crawled through and were lum- 
bering down the valley between the two slopes. 
The 87 millimeter guns of the 167th put them 
all out of action. 

Machine-guns were spraying the Germans, 
hand-grenades bursting in groups of them, rifles 
were spitting at them from the parapets, but still 
they came on. And when the peril of the right 
wing seemed very real and the Germans were 
piling to the top of the ridge faster than they 
were dying, the Alabamians made the first 
counter-attack. 

No more splendid exhibition of reckless, in- 
domitable courage was produced in the whole war 
than this counter-attack on the proud Prussian 
troops by the Americans from the sunny South- 
land. No Americans had ever done it before. 



62 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

The Alabamians went in by platoons, winding 
through the trenches, crawling over heaps of dead 
French, Americans and Germans, and labyrinths 
of tangled wire, into the melee. Of the first 
platoon none ever came back. By the time a 
company of French reinforcements arrived with 
orders to retake two lost positions, Lieut. Hoxie 
Fairchild, with an E Company platoon, had 
already retaken them. The French, with another 
platoon under Lieut. M. L. Marklin, retook a 
third. 

Thus they were still fighting while the sun 
rose high and the air grew warm and the day 
advanced, and the first shock of the last German 
offensive had fallen on men who would not yield 
an inch. 

And what, throughout all this, of the left of 
the line where the old 69th New York— "The 
Fighting Harps" — and the old guardsmen from 
Ohio were holding on? 

The third Battalion of the 165th under Major 
William (Wild Bill) Donovan (later Lieuten- 
ant-Colonel), and the Second Battalion, under 



Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 63 

Major Alexander Anderson, were over there* 
fighting like wild-cats. 

Standing right beside Lieut. Thomas M. 
Young as the Germans came on, a man had 
been killed. Probably it was Sergeant Tom 
O'Rourke; he was one of the first New Yorkers 
killed in that fight. At any rate Lieut. Young 
saw the German who had killed him — a sniper — 
and within a few minutes Young had killed the 
German. He was elated. "Boys, I got my first 
German!" he shouted, and the next second a 
grenade killed him, and the Boche were up to 
the wire. By noon they had gained a foothold 
seven times in the New Yorkers' trenches and 
seven times had been hurled out. That evening 
at six o'clock they tried it again and were beaten 
off. 

All night bombs and shells fell on the fighting 
lines and rear areas ; steady showers of them on 
hospitals, towns and roads. There was no rest 
from them, especially the bombs. By day the j 
sky was literally dark with German aeroplanes; I 
every French plane had been chased away. 

The German aviators would hover above the 



64 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

trenches like hawks circling to pounce on chick- 
ens, then swooping low, cut loose with machine- 
guns and showers of steel darts upon the heads 
of the infantry. Carrying parties with ammuni- 
tion had to dodge these planes as they would 
swarms of bees. Stretcher-bearers carrying 
wounded men through trenches and along roads 
were shot down by low-flying aviators. 

At six o'clock on the morning of July 16 the 
Germans attacked again on the left, and after 
they had been driven off for the fifth time the 
men of G Company, commanded by Capt. John 
T. Prout, were too mad to stand still. Where- 
upon the second splendid, wild American charge 
was made, as worthy of immortality as the 
counter-attack of the Alabamians on the first 
day. 

The enemy was taking cover from American 
rifle fire when Lieut. Kenneth C. Ogle of G Com- 
pany gathered his platoon and prepared to go 
over the top as soon as the Boche came out of 
hiding. So that when they were coming toward 
the old 69th's trenches for the sixth time that 



Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 63 

morning they found before them not the blazing 
muzzles of rifles, but thirty-eight wild sons of 
Erin, yelling and rushing at them with long, bare 
bayonets. 

The Germans turned and fled, but the Ameri- 
cans had the better start, and they caught and 
bayonetted twenty-two without a single casualty 
to themselves. With such success they couldn't 
turn back, so they kept on to the old French posi- 
tion now held by the Germans, but were held off 
by superior machine-gun fire. On their way back 
they killed off a party of Germans creeping up 
an old boyau, and threw grenades into a dugout, 
killing fourteen more. 

Lieut. Ellet of E Company, commanded by 
Capt. Charles D. Baker, counter-attacked with 
his platoon under orders from the French that 
were received at 6 :05, telling him to attack at six 
o'clock. Ellet attacked immediately, despite the 
possibility of heavy casualties through the mix-up 
in time, and not only retook the lost position but 
captured twelve prisoners, including an officer. 
Ellet was killed in the Argonne fight. 

The rest of that day the Germans spent in 



66 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

desperate attempts to break through by ruses and 
tricks. A bunch of them ran up dressed in 
French uniforms (they had taken them from the 
dead out there in the sacrifice companies), and 
got close enough to throw grenades at a gun- 
crew of the 150th Machine-Gun Battalion, kill- 
ing two Wisconsin gunners, and putting the gun 
out of action. Another Wisconsin man, mor- 
tally wounded but still at his gun, drove them 
away, and died firing. Later forty Germans 
came up yelling "Kamerad!" with upraised 
hands. The Americans fired on them at once, 
and when the Germans fell, grenades wrapped 
in handkerchiefs fell from their hands. Still 
later a German in a French uniform came Tun- 
ing toward the lines with four others chasing him. 
Our men were not deceived and shot them all 
down. 

On the night of July 16 the Germans gave up 
hope, and the hand-to-hand fighting ceased. The 
Allied line in the Champagne, though it had bent 
in and out during the two days' battle, was re- 
established with not a foot of ground lost; the 
German offensive had crumpled in the early 



•Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 67 

hours of the first day. The decisive battle of the 
war had been won. 

Now the Hun became spiteful. Raging in 
defeat he shelled the rear areas as far back as 
Chalons, and sprinkled the earth with bombs 
from the sky. Back there where the ammunition 
and supplies had come from and where the 
wounded had been carried, the scene was inde- 
scribable. Dead horses lay everywhere — simply 
spattered about the landscape. The big Ameri- 
can hospital at Bussy-le-Chateau had been 
wrecked by bombs — several wards full of 
wounded soldiers destroyed and the men killed. 
Roads were obliterated for miles ; a blight seemed 
to have descended on trees and vegetation; every- 
where within a radius of twenty miles the earth 
was torn and tortured. But the line had held ; the 
bodies of Americans of the Rainbow had barred 
the road to Chalons ; and some were in huddled, 
shapeless heaps in the trenches and some were 
wiping off their bayonets and crying. 

Gouraud talked to them on the 19th (the Rain- 
bow had been relieved the day before by Moroc- 
can troops) . In a little field near Army Head- 



68 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

quarters, the French General stood and reviewed 
a battalion of the 166th Infantry from Ohio, 
whose men had fought with the New Yorkers on 
the left. His empty left sleeve was in the pocket 
of his tunic ; tall and erect like a story-book hero, 
he moved with a limp — he had a shattered hip — > 
and his eyes burned like live coals. 

With his good arm behind his back He stood 
before what assemblage of Rainbow officers it 
had been possible to gather and thanked them, 
and through them, the men. It was a strange 
assemblage; scrubby-chinned men, dirty and 
torn, half -blind and half -choked still with gas, 
muscles and nerves still quivering with the long 
fight; and staff officers whose painful attempts 
at polishing up for the occasion were obvious and 
soldierly. 

He said few words, did Gouraud, but they 
were deep words. They said the Rainbow Divi- 
sion had put a new spirit into France; that be- 
fore the battle their mere presence had been a 
tonic ; that their resistance during the battle was 
like a promise of new life. And he announced 
for the first time the successful launching of an 



Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 69) 

allied offensive between Soissons and Chateau- 
Thierry. 

Officers who had not slept for days — covered 
with the dirt and blood of the trenches — shouted 
with joy. Camps of men just out of the jaws of 
death rang with laughter and song. The tide of 
war had turned. The French celebrated their 
Fourteenth of July on July 19, and champagne 
ran like water. 

But they say that Sergeant Lawrence Quigley, 
a Minneapolis man in D Battery, 151st Minne- 
sota Artillery, had no part in the rejoicing. His 
gun — his beautiful gun, "Mary Ann" — that he 
had been firing steadily for seventy-two hours, 
had gone out of commission during the last few 
minutes, and he was weeping like a baby. 



CHAPTER V 

THE RAINBOW'S FIRST ATTACK — ACROSS THE 
BLOODY OURCQ, 

Paris was alive with the two great pieces of 
news of that decisive month of July, 1918 — the 
successful defense before Chalons and the Allied 
advance before Soissons. The Rainbow Divi- 
sion, defenders of the Champagne, tasted swiftly 
of the rewards of heroes as they rolled through 
ISToisy-le-sec, and passed on to more fighting. 

Coming by rail from Chalons where long- 
range artillery reached hungrily even after the 
moving train, the Division, in order to come to 
La-Ferte-sous-Jouarre, had to go close to Paris, 
for the Germans were in Chateau- Thierry. 

Noisy-le-sec is a suburb of Paris. The long 
trains that carried the Rainbow rolled through 
there between July 21 and 24. It was a beauti- 
ful day — warm and mellow — and wherever they 

70 



The Rainbow's First Attack 71 

could find holds for hands and feet, the men clung 
to open flat-cars, taking the air. Bridges across 
the railroad yards were crowded with Parisians, 
mostly women and girls. For nearly four years 
they had had no chance to celebrate a victory, 
but now they had one, and here, within sound of 
their voices, were the Americans who had stopped 
the Germans in the Champagne. 

They cheered wildly and threw kisses and 
flowers at the men in olive-drab. The men 
cheered back; their spirits had returned, they had 
seen the worst of war; there was nothing they 
could not tackle now. It was good to be alive 
on this warm July morning with Paris cheering 
you as a conquering hero. This was the "sort 
of stuff you read about." 

It was thus the Rainbow Division went toward 
the Aisne-Marne Offensive for what was to be 
the bloodiest battle of the outfit's history. For 
at this stage of the war it was "Push while the 
pushing is good," and no division of soldiers with 
such reputations as the Rainbow for steadfast- 
ness and valor could be permitted to rest while 
there were such possibilities of getting the Roche 



72 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

on the run, not even when that division had "been 
in actual combat without rest since midwinter. 

On July 24-25 it was moving by camion from 
La-Ferte-sous- Jouarre to the vicinity of jEpieds. 

The general situation around the beautiful 
Marne valley, which the men of the Rainbow 
were now seeing for the first time, was this : 

When the Germans had broken through in 
May and June they had been finally stopped 
at the Marne. Their gains from Rheims to 
Chateau-Thierry and to Soissons made a salient 
reaching out and threatening Paris. The Ger- 
man offensive of July 15, that the Rainbow had 
just helped to stop, had extended down the east 
side of this salient to Chateau-Thierry. Down 
there the American Third Division, supported 
by the 28th — Pennsylvania National Guards- 
men — had opposed a crossing east of Chateau- 
Thierry and confined the Boche to a gain of a 
few miles near Fossoy. 

And now, with that drive definitely halted, 
Marshal Foch, on July 18, had opened an attack 
on both sides and at the point of the Chateau- 
SThierry salient. The Germans had gotten them- 



The Rainbow's First Attach 73 

selves into a pocket; they had tried to broaden 
it and deepen it and failed. The Day of the 
Allies had come. 

The First and Second American Divisions had 
made a surprise attack south of Soissons. The 
Fourth Division had exerted some pressure on 
the western side near Lizy. The enemy recrossed 
the River Marne before he was attacked by the 
Fourth Division, which followed him for eight 
kilometers, side by side with the 26th (Yankee) 
Division. The 26th made the pivotal attack 
north of Chateau-Thierry. The rest of the at- 
tacking troops were French, with a few British 
divisions south of and close to Rheims. 

It is likely that after the reverse of July 15 in 
the Champagne, LudendorfF realized that the 
Chateau-Thierry salient was a menace to his 
army. But Foch had realized it quicker than he ; 
vast quantities of stores had piled up in there for 
use in the advance on Paris, and they could not 
be removed and the salient evacuated before the 
Allies were upon him. 

As the pocket shrunk under Foch's pressure 
the fronts of the fighting forces narrowed ; it be- 



74 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

came practicable to take out of the line divisions 
that had been leading the attack. So the 26th 
American Division and the 167th French Divi- 
sion came out for a rest, and the Rainbow took 
over the job that both of them had been handling. 

The 84th Infantry Brigade, under Brigadier- 
General Robert A. Brown, took the sector of the 
26th Division, and the 83rd Infantry Brigade, 
under Brigadier-General Michael J. Lenihan, 
took the 167th Division's sector. The 84th Bri- 
gade, with the 168th (Iowa) and 167th (Ala- 
bama) Infantry regiments, had the right of the 
divisional line, and the 83rd Brigade, with the 
165th (New York) and 166th (Ohio) regiments, 
had the left. 

The artillery of the 26th Division stayed in 
position to work with the 67th Artillery Brigade 
of the Rainbow, commanded by Brigadier- Gen- 
eral George G. Gatley. 

Coming up for the relief on July 24, the Rain- 
bow Division had marched to within two kilo- 
meters of the front line. Seeking for the point 
where they were to establish the Post of Com- 
mand for the 168th regiment, Colonel Bennett, 



The Rainbow's First Attack 75 

Lieutenant- Colonel Tinley, and the regimental 
adjutant, Captain Van Order, performed that 
day the novel feat of riding around No-Man's- 
Land in an automobile. 

They didn't do it purposely. This had not 
been a quiet sector like the sectors the Rainbow 
were familiar with; the landscape lacked the es- 
tablished institutions of rusty brown camouflage 
screens, old trench systems and fields of barbed 
wire. So the Colonel, the Lieutenant-Colonel 
and the adjutant, looking for woods where the 
"P. C." would be, suddenly found themselves in 
the neighborhood of new trenches. And when 
they had oriented themselves it dawned upon 
them that they were looking upon those trenches 
from the wrong side. They got back without 
waste motion and discovered they had gone about 
a kilometer too far to the north. 

This time the Rainbow Division found its work 
cut out for it. So to speak, it was getting up 
into the war's higher seats of learning, having 
left behind the stand-pattism of the Luneville 
and Baccarat sectors and the plain, old-fashioned 
doggedness of the Champagne. Now its job 



76 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

was not merely to hold what ground it had but 
to get more ; not merely to outfight the Germans 
but to outwit them — to demonstrate that they 
knew more about driving the Boche back than 
the Boche knew about standing fast. Instead of 
defending, they were now to attack. 

And directly in front of the 167th and 168th 
Infantry regiments, as the Rainbow took over 
the job from the Yankee Division and the 
French, lay the Boche in one of the finest little 
nests in France. They called it La Croix Rouge 
Farm ; it was in a clearing surrounded by forests 
on four sides, and a road ran diagonally through 
it from southeast to northwest. The far side of 
the road was lined with German machine-guns; 
the woods on three sides were lined with them, 
and you couldn't see them. 

The division completed all its dispositions dur- 
ing the day and night of July 25, and without 
wasting a moment of time the 168th attacked La 
Croix Rouge Farm early on the morning of the 
26th. 

Two platoons of F Company, commanded by 
Capt. Charles J. Casey, took it. They discov- 



The Rainbow's First Attack 77 

ered a little ditch leading up to it, and, sneaking 
through this in the morning mists, surprised the 
Germans, killed or captured them and turned the 
machine-guns eastward upon the enemy in the 
woods. 

All that afternoon the wooded slopes around 
La Croix Rouge Farm formed the ring in which 
a terrific battle went on. The men of the Rain- 
bow — Alabamians on the left of the farm and 
Iowans on the right — had their first experience 
with those withering blasts of machine-gun fire 
with which the German Army protected its 
masterly retreat during all the days that fol- 
lowed. 

The morale of the Boche was still high — as 
high as ever, in fact. While von LudendorfF 
would have liked to withdraw from the Chateau- 
Thierry pocket at his own will, taking his sup- 
plies with him, he was nevertheless prepared to 
try to delay even a dashing American effort to 
drive him out. And the beginning and the end 
of his preparation was the machine-gun — hun- 
dreds and thousands of machine-guns — with men 
behind them who knew the weapon and had high 



78 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

confidence in it and no small amount of courage 
in handling it. 

These things the battle for La Croix Rouge 
Farm taught the Rainbow Division at the outset 
of its participation in the Aisne-Marne Offensive. 
These things it had impressed upon it again and 
again — hour after hour in blood and death — 
while it struggled for new footholds always 
farther northward, through yellow wheat-fields 
where death lurked and over ridges whose crim- 
son hue at evening was not always of the sunset. 

The Rainbow gave ground that 26th of July, 
gave up La Croix Rouge Farm deliberately and 
retired, and it was not the lesser part of valor 
that they did. This new thing, this machine-gun 
resistance, was dawning on them; to capture a 
place and to be basking in contentment, and then 
to discover that there was no contentment be- 
cause just beyond was the German with his ma- 
chine-guns and their newly-won prize was his 
field of fire. Always it must be on, and on, and 
on, with no end in sight except death for the Ger- 
mans or for them. 

But that night the Germans evacuated La 



The Rainbow's First Attack 79* 

Croix Rouge Farm for the second time. It was 
the key to the position on that line, and rinding it 
too hot to hold they retired nearly six kilometers 
to a new defensive line across the Ourcq River. 

Here was a new situation — an unpleasant one. 
True, the enemy had given up six kilometers, but 
now he was in a great natural fortress, with the 
village of Sergy in the valley backed by bare hills 
that sloped up to plateaus eighty meters high. On 
the east there was flank protection for the Ger- 
mans in groups of small woodlands, and there 
was flank protection on the west in a small creek 
called the Ru du Pont Brule. Meurcy Farm 
and more woodland lay in the valley of this creek 
near its junction with the Ourcq, and farther up 
the creek was the village and chateau of Nesles. 
Farther to the right the village of Seringes com- 
manded Meurcy Farm and the Forest of Nesles 
was behind the village of that name. 

It was the tried, veteran army of Imperial 
Germany fighting desperately near the end of its 
fourth year of superhuman effort and ideally 
situated for defense, against the new, untried 
soldiers from the United States, who had no ad- 



80 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

vantages except freshness in the general matter 
of war, and not much of that, considering the 
gruelling struggle in the Champagne. But the 
Rainbow Division went to it. 

Over the six kilometers the Germans had given 
up after evacuating La Croix Rouge Farm the 
division moved with little trouble, disposing eas- 
ily of sacrifice detachments of machine-gunners 
left behind to delay the advance. Only at La 
Croix Blanche Farm, northeast of La Croix 
Rouge Farm, was there anything much resem- 
bling a battle. On the night of July 27th, the 
division regained contact with the enemy's new 
line. Machine-gun fire from the north bank of 
the Ourcq fell upon armored cars that were re- 
connoitering ahead of the infantry, and the col- 
umns halted for the night about a kilometer south 
of the little river. 

At dawn next morning the fight to cross the 
Ourcq began. The Germans had blown up two 
bridges near Sergy ; the stream was swollen with 
rains to a width of fourteen meters and a depth 
of four, and the men had to struggle through the 
little torrent. Machine guns opened on them 



The Rainbow's First Attach 81 

from Sergy directly in front and Meurcy Farm 
on the flank and the stream ran red with the 
blood of the Rainbow. 

The men of New York's old 69th, commanded 
then by Colonel Frank McCoy, got the first foot- 
hold on the opposite bank and before noon the 
other four regiments were coming over, Ohioans 
of the 166th on the extreme left, New Yorkers 
next, then the Alabamians of the 167th, and on 
the extreme right the 168th from Iowa. 

The struggle for Sergy and Meurcy Farm 
lasted all that day, all night and throughout the 
morning of July 29th. Once on the enemy's 
side of the Ourcq, Colonel Screws' men from 
Alabama and Colonel Bennett's men from Iowa 
rushed Sergy and took it. They were swept 
back to the river bank by machine-gun blasts 
from the woods on the left. They rallied, 
rushed the village again, and this time ran into 
one of the best divisions in the German Army, 
the Fourth Prussian Guards. 

Americans who were at home then will remem- 
ber the thrilling message of M. Andre Tardieu 
— "Today" (or words to that effect) "American 



82 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

soldiers met and defeated on the River Ourcq 
the best troops of the Prussian Guard." Amer- 
ican troops did defeat the best troops of the Prus- 
sian Guard and it was of this battle and of the 
Rainbow Division that M. Tardieu spoke that 
day. 

They defeated the Prussians but at what 
seemed then a terrible cost. Throughout the 
whole of July 28th, the lines rolled back and 
forth. Now the Americans had Sergy; now the 
Germans had it. To the right the 28th Divi- 
sion fought for Hill 220; to the left the 83rd 
Brigade of the Rainbow struggled for Meurcy 
Farm. 

Again, as in Champagne, the Rainbow had to 
fight an air-battle as well as a ground battle. 
Swarms of German combat planes were over 
them constantly, darting earthward and firing 
machine-guns into them. All Allied planes 
seemed to have been driven from the sky; Ger- 
man air supremacy seemed complete. But as 
the Champagne had produced Corporal Doty 
of the 165th, as a stalker of bird-men, so the Bat- 
tle of the Ourcq produced a "ground-ace" in Ser- 



The Rainbow's First Attack 83 

geant Frank Gardello, Jr., of the same regi- 
ment's machine-gun company, who brought down 
two planes with one burst. 

Both were flying low, one directly over the 
other. Gardello's fire riddled the upper one and 
when he fell he landed squarely on the lower one. 
Both aviators were killed. Never before or since 
in the whole history of the war, was a similar 
feat performed. 

It was growing dusk on July 28th when the 
Alabamians and Iowans rushed Sergy for the 
last time that day — and held it. The German 
artillery shelled it savagely all night and clouds 
of bombing planes circled around and around it, 
dropping tons of bombs, but the Rainbows hud- 
dled closer and closer behind ruined house-walls, 
and stuck. 

Then early in the morning of the 29th the 
Prussian Guard returned to the battle and in a 
final desperate charge drove the doughboys out 
of Sergy for the seventh time; drove them back 
to the banks of the Ourcq. Thus after two days 
of fighting after the German retirement from La 
Croix Rouge Farm, the Rainbow had made no 



84 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

permanent gains and its casualties had been 
heavy. Meurcy Farm, Sergy and Hill 220 were 
still German strongholds, commanded by ma- 
chine-guns in other German strongholds farther 
on. Something had to be done. 

The thing that was done was the thing that, 
more than any other one battle move, broke the 
morale of the German army and bade fair, later 
on to turn its splendid rear-guard action into a 
rout. 

The Rainbow Division, having fought nothing 
but stand-up fights against a foe who could either 
be bayoneted or sniped, entered the battle of the 
Ourcq knowing nothing of the Boches' perfection 
in machine-gun defense. The Germans simply 
"had the reach on them." No soldiers in the 
world were more willing than the Americans to 
come to close quarters with the enemy and fight 
it out with bayonets. The difficulty the Rain- 
bow was finding here on the Ourcq was in get- 
ting to close quarters without being killed or dis- 
abled. Rushing through the open up to the con- 
cealed German machine-guns in the hope of 
frightening the gunners into surrender, or of 



The Rainbow's First Attack 85 

catching them off their guard, was sheer suicide. 
That was now certain. 

So then and there the Rainbow conceived and 
launched a typically American style of attack; 
launched it as extemporaneously as a great ora- 
tor in the heat of a debate launches an immortal 
phrase. It claims no credit for having orig- 
inated it. In one form or another the American 
divisions who had fought in Belleau Wood and 
up to La Croix Rouge Farm and before Sois- 
sons had used the same method of capturing 
German machine-gun nests. But the Rainbow 
knew nothing about that. It had had no school- 
ing in such work. Without time for either rest 
or schooling it had come from a sector of patrols 
and raids to a sector of defense and from there 
directly to a sector of offense, and what it learned 
it had to learn by bitter, costly experience. 

What it did now, with Sergy, Meurcy Farm, 
Seringes, Hill 220 and the whole line of other 
flank positions still in German hands after nearly 
two days of fighting, was an inspiration born of 
desperation; the grim, determined desperation 



86 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

of baffled men bound to beat an opponent at his 
own game if it takes a lifetime. 

On the morning of the 29th the entire Rain- 
bow Division made a general attack, not only 
upon Sergy and Meurcy Farm but upon the pla- 
teau between. It was not a rush this time; it 
was a painfully slow crawl. German machine- 
guns blazed from fields of tall, yellow wheat on 
top of the plateau. Then from the tall grass a 
brown streak would suddenly shoot ahead for a 
yard or two and disappear from view while the 
German guns blazed at it. A moment of quiet, 
then off to the left another brown streak and a 
burst of bullets from the wheat. Then in the 
center another, then another to the right, until a 
half-dozen men were headed toward that single 
German machine-gun, advancing in quick dives, 
now left, now right, now center ; and whenever a 
man dived a volley of rifles from his comrades an- 
swered the stutter of the machine-gun. 

And soon — though it might be a half hour or 
an hour and though a sheaf of bullets might have 
caught one of those brown streaks in midair so 
that it never dived again — a little ring of men in 



The Rainbow's First Attach 87 

olive-drab would be around that machine-gun 
nest, and "a kill" would be on. 

One by one the German machine-gun nests 
grew silent. As the day waned the clatter of 
them, like the clatter of rivetting hammers, came 
from farther and farther to the north. The 
Iowans took Sergy. They got some machine- 
guns to a near crest of Hill 220, from which they 
could lire into the German nests in the Arbre les 
Jomblets and the Bois de Planchette. 

Here on Hill 220, Sergeant B. W. Hamilton 
of M Company, 168th Infantry, wounded while 
out ahead of his own line, was attacked by ten 
Prussian Guardsmen. He shot five and the rest 
ran away. 

The Alabamians got well on toward the top of 
the plateau, and the 185th, unsuccessful at 
Meurcy Farm with the new "Indian method" of 
attack on machine-guns, called for a long con- 
centration of artillery fire on the place; and 
finally their Irish tempers got the best of them 
and they went at it with their bayonets as they 
had gone over the top in the Champagne. They 



88 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

killed the German machine-gunners in hand-to- 
hand fighting. 

In the afternoon Colonel Hough's men of the 
166th Ohio regiment stormed Seringes on its 
high, bare hill. It was a gallant charge across 
twelve hundred meters of ground entirely with- 
out cover while machine-gun nests flanked it and 
heavy fire came from the village. Instead of 
taking it by direct attack the Ohioans worked 
around it and took Hill 184 to the northwest. 
From there they silenced the machine-guns in 
Seringes and then went down and bayoneted the 
gunners who were left. 

It was shortly after this, you will remember, 
that stories became current about Germans be- 
ing found chained to their machine-guns in the 
woods. There also began coming, from German 
sources, stories of inhuman cruelty of American 
soldiers. There had been many other stories 
theretofore, bearing on the inhuman treatment 
of German soldiers by their officers, and there 
had been much German propaganda intended to 
counteract stories of German flendishness and 
cruelty. 



The Rainbow's First Attack 89! 

But behind those stories in those days of late 
July and early August, 1918, was something 
more than propaganda. There was looming up 
in the German army a feeling of terror of these 
quick, forward-moving men in olive-drab, who 
were not afraid even of the wonderful German 
machine-guns, but who dived and wriggled 
toward them and were suddenly all around them 
in desperate little rings. 

German gunners were being chained to their 
guns; it was becoming necessary. And since 
men at bay will always fight for their lives, the 
fights around the machine-gun nests in the Bat- 
tle of the Ourcq were nearly always fights to the 
death. The Bainbow Division took few prison- 
ers in that battle; its record of prisoners cap- 
tured throughout the war falls short of the rec- 
ords of one or two other divisions; it usually 
fought to kill. That was the cruelty of which 
the Germans spoke. 

With this advance of the Bainbow through the 
first of the Ourcq's great defenses, the German 
High Command, too, became alarmed for the 
dignity of its retirement from the Chateau- 



90 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Thierry Salient. It began putting in reserves. 
Opposite the Rainbow there was now from left 
to right, the 10th Landwehr Division, the 6th 
Bavarian Reserve, the Fourth Prussian Guard 
and the 201st Division. Nowhere else along the 
whole righting front were German troops massed 
so densely as opposite the Rainbow, the 28th and 
the 3rd American Divisions at this stage of the 
Ourcq Battle. 

By eight o'clock on the night of July 30, 
Colonel Fairchild, the Rainbow Division Sur- 
geon, had reported the losses in wounded alone 
as 3,276 men, from the beginning of the fighting 
at La Croix Rouge Farm. Of the killed no rec- 
ord could be kept at that time. The brave men 
who had died were out there in the waving wheat- 
fields and the bodies of some of them had floated 
down the Ourcq. 

But neither losses nor German reinforcements, 
could stop the Rainbow Division now that it had 
started. The Foret de Nesles lay before it, full 
of German defenses, and from the woods on Hill 
220 machine-guns still raked the positions of the 
168th. At nine a. m. on the 10th Colonel Screws 



The Rainbow's First Attach 91 

and his 167th Alabamians started through the 
wheat toward the Chateau de Nesles, and with 
the aid of the sniping guns of the 26th Division's 
artillery which had blasted out machine-gun 
nests, crossed the plateau and dug in close to the 
Chateau. The 168th had to dig in after progress- 
ing about five hundred yards. 

In Meurcy Farm Colonel McCoy's New York- 
ers could only dig in and seek shelter from the 
withering fire down the valley of the Ru du Pont 
Brule. Light field batteries and machine-guns 
played constantly on the ruins, and an unceasing 
duel went on between them and the 151st Ar- 
tillery from Minnesota. The most of the 165th 
could have done was hold and they did that with 
heroic tenacity. 

That night the Ohioans of the 166th, finding 
Seringes a rather hot place to hold, worked a 
ruse. They deserted the village. During the 
afternoon enemy patrols, filtering into it, found 
it empty. More came in and still more, until 
by nightfall a large body of them were there, 
probably preparing new machine-gun positions, 
if not preparing a counter-attack. 



92 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

And all this time Colonel Hough's men were 
hanging to the edge of Hill 184, and when dark- 
ness had fallen they surrounded Seringes, at- 
tacked it from every side, and in a fierce hand-to- 
hand battle mopped it as clean of Germans as a 
new bathroom floor. 

The 168th fought its last fight of the Ourcq 
campaign on August 1, when it took Hill 212. 
It was a terrible task and the fight lasted all 
through the hot day. The whole regiment was 
in the battle at one stage or another with Major 
Claude Stanley's second battalion leading the 
first attack, Major Emory Worthington's First 
Battalion relieving Stanley, and the Third Bat- 
talion under Major Guy Brewer coming in 
toward the end of the day. The Third Battal- 
ion was the first to get a firm foothold on the hill. 

It was Private Burke, Major Brewer's per- 
sonal orderly, who carried to regimental head- 
quarters at La Motte Farm the message that 
Hill 212 had at last been captured, after three 
runners who had started with the same message 
had been killed by German artillery. Shells fell 
in the whole Ourcq valley that day like rain. 



The Rainbow's First Attack 93 

Hill 212 commanded the Foret de Nesles, 
which was now the only strong position the 
Boche had left in his whole Ourcq system. 
French and American artillery concentrating 
upon it, silenced the German batteries and they 
began to withdraw. And on the night of August 
1, the German infantry pulled itself together 
quietly, and silently stole away toward the River 
Vesle. 

The Rainbow had outwitted, outgamed and 
outfought the best soldiers in the German army. 
They were now in full retreat from the Ourcq. 

The pursuit started next morning. The 168th, 
exhausted after six days and nights of constant 
fighting of the hardest kind, was relieved by the 
117th Engineers from California and South 
Carolina, commanded by Colonel Kelly. This 
regiment, ready now to attack as infantry as they 
had been ready to defend in the Champagne, 
carried on the chase with the Ohio, Alabama and 
New York infantry regiments. 

That day the Rainbow advanced through the 
Foret de Nesles nearly five kilometers beyond 
the point from which it had started in the morn- 



94 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

ing. The Germans in their hurry to get away 
blew up great ammunition dumps, but the Rain- 
bow came so closely upon their heels that they 
deserted nearly thirty thousand shells which the 
division captured intact. 

A line running between Mont St. Martin and 
Chery Chartreuve was the limit of the Rainbow's 
advance; between the first named point and La 
Croix Rouge Farm the distance was seventeen 
kilometers — the longest advance by any division 
attacking between Soissons and Rheims. There 
a relief of the Rainbow by the Fourth Division, 
which had been progressing during the pursuit, 
was completed, but the artillery stayed in position 
for several days assisting the Fourth to maintain 
a footing beyond the Vesle River. 

The weather was hot, and the country full of 
ruined villages, dead, unburied bodies — Boche 
and American — and thousands of dead horses. 
The men were dirty; baths were next to impos- 
sible. Rut instead of being withdrawn from the 
salient which seemed on the verge of becoming a 
pest-hole, the Rainbow Division infantry was 



The Rainbow's First Attach 95 

held in reserve for nearly a week. Sickness 
broke out. 

And into the middle of this filthy backyard of 
war with its sickening smells and sights and its 
unkempt, lousy men there bounded on a fine 
afternoon one Elsie Janis — fluffy, beautiful, 
piquant — not at all unlike a goddess just step- 
ping out of the clouds for a bit to see what it was 
all about down here below. That's what it 
seemed like to the Rainbow Division. 

They hauled a wagon-bed into an open field 
and made a stage of it, and there Elsie Janis 
danced and sang before a vast concourse of un- 
washed doughboys who suddenly remembered 
that there was such a thing in the world as a 
pretty American girl — and were somewhat awed 
and saddened at the remembrance. An aero- 
plane came whirring overhead while Elsie Janis 
sang "Oh, You Dirty Germans!" It came so 
low that you could see the black maltese cross on 
the lower planes. But nobody minded. 



CHAPTER VI 

AND SPEAKING OF ELSIE JANIS 

Was that the only bit of diversion that came to 
the Rainbow Division? Was there anything at 
all outside of fighting and the anticipation of 
more fighting to keep up its morale ? 

Perhaps this is as fitting a place as any other to 
tell about that. There is very little to tell. 
Most of the diversion the Rainbow got it sup- 
plied itself. Moving, as it did, from battle to 
battle and from one part of the front to another, 
it gave professional entertainers little chance to 
catch up with it. It manufactured its own 
amusements, whetting its sense of humor on the 
French scenery and the country people. The 
Rainbow Division lived twenty years over there 
in less than a score of months; it caught its fun 
where it found it. It had to. 

So, as it rolled through France in box-cars or 

96 



And Speaking of Elsie Janis 97 

trucks it got as many laughs out of a pair of 
wooden shoes or an old gentleman riding on an 
ox-cart as you at home were getting out of the 
most popular comedians. 

In the old Baccarat sector it had had more 
time for the sort of diversion the Y. M. C. A. 
brought later to the American troops in France. 
But at that period the Y. M. C. A.'s system of 
entertainments had not reached the wholly effi- 
cient stage. The American Expeditionary 
Force was new then, and so were its auxiliaries. 

But the Y. M. C. A. had brought out base- 
balls and bats and gloves and on those quiet days 
in May the American baseball season had opened 
officially in Lorraine, France, where first-base 
was likely to be a surviving splinter of a ruined 
barn and home plate a filled-in shell hole. And 
there were many sets of boxing gloves. 

They used to stage bouts in the streets of the 
front line villages in the Baccarat sector. The 
Iowans would fight the Alabamians and the New 
Yorkers would fight the Ohioans, and inter- 
State championship disputes were fought out 
day after day. Sometimes these ring-battles 



98 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

drew big crowds. One of the biggest crowds 
gathered one day toward the end of May in the 
little town of Pexonne where a Franco-Ameri- 
can bout was to take place. The "Franco" was 
a French soldier. The American was Corporal 
"Kid" Gorden of the Maryland Trench-Mortar 
Battery. 

They had roped off a ring in the middle of the 
town square of Pexonne. More than three hun- 
dred men were gathered there — French and 
American soldiers. It was a warm, clear day — 
not a cloud in the sky, and the low hum of planes 
echoed over the land like the pleasant summer 
noise of bees. 

Gorden was getting the best of the French- 
man. The latter had come up groggily for the 
fifth round and the Americans in the crowd were 
shouting, "Put him out, Kid! One haymaker'll 
finish him! Land on his beak!" The American 
boy tucked his left ear behind his shoulder, 
rushed in and was uncoiling a terrific right swing 
when a strange noise shut out the sound of cheer- 
ing — a loud, roaring buzz directly overhead. 
Somebody shouted "Look out!" The crowd 



And Speaking of Elsie Janis 99 

looked up, and there was a German plane, swoop- 
ing low, making straight for the ringside. 

Instinctively the group broke, scurrying for 
cover. Gorden's haymaker stopped in mid-air ; a 
dozen arms were around the groggy French 
boxer dragging him away. And then with a 
splintering crash a bomb hit the village "!Epi- 
cerie" and tore it to pieces. 

That was the last street boxing-match the 
Rainbow Division held in the Baccarat sector. 
The German aviator had seen the animated black 
spot below him, just behind the Allied lines, and, 
coming lower he had made it out to be a group 
of men — an excellent target. And the little 
French grocery store which he had hit with his 
bomb was on the edge of the square less than a 
hundred yards from the boxing ring. 

So orders forbidding the grouping of many 
men in one spot were more strictly enforced and 
the boxing matches stopped. Thereafter, when 
the men wanted to box they had to take to the 
forests in the rear and they could not get there 
unless they happened to be enjoying a relief 
from the trench vigil. But the ball games con- 



100 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

tinued, with the doors and windows of the vil- 
lages serving as bleachers and grandstands and 
the pitchers working with one eye on the skies 
and the other on the batters. And everybody 
with his gas-mask at the "alert." 

There had been band concerts, too, in the 
Baccarat days. At sunset they held retreat and 
the regimental bands had played Sousa marches 
and winding up with "The Star Spangled Ban- 
ner," while the doughboys in long ranks stood at 
"present arms," and every American within the 
sound of the band stopped dead in his tracks and 
stood in reverent silence, thinking of his home 
and his country. 

And in a few minutes, if the wind was right, 
there would come faintly from the north the 
sound of brass horns playing "The Watch on 
the Bhine" — a German band at the evening cere- 
mony. 

Thus lived the Bainbow in France, thriving 
'(unlike "Jack" of the proverb) on nearly all 
work and hardly any play; and never growing 
too dull to cut a German throat. Such groups 
of traveling minstrels as came to other divisions 



And Speaking of Elsie Janis 101 

and made merry seldom if ever came to the Rain- 
bow. Its chances to play ended when it left the 
Baccarat sector and those chances never returned 
until the war was over. 



CHAPTER VII 

WITH THE FIRST AMERICAN ARMY IN THE STROLL 
THROUGH ST. MIHIEL 

There were gaps in the ranks of the Rainbow 
now — big gaps. Behind it along Europe's bat- 
tle line from Lorraine to the River Vesle, 
stretched a long trail, marked here by wooden 
crosses, marked there by muddy mounds. It had 
been in France nine months and it was an Amer- 
ican division of veterans. 

They took it out of the reeking country be- 
tween the Ourcq and the Vesle on August 12, 
and marched it back to the La-Ferte-sous- 
Jouarre area. There it rested a couple of days. 
There were chateaus in La-Ferte-sous-Jouarre, 
and broad roads shaded with mighty trees; the 
weather was warm and the air sweet and spark- 
ling like old wine. And if you had luck you got 

a hot bath and a haircut ; and if you were an of- 

102 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 103 

ficer with an automobile you could steal into 
Paris and grab off a couple of fancy meals and 
see the places where the bright lights used to be. 

But La-Ferte-sous-Jouarre with Paris in 
touring distance was too good to last. On 
August 17 the division was loaded into cars 
marked "Hommes 40, Chevaux 8," and rolled 
off to the Bourmont area. It was booked for a 
period of "intensive training." 

Bourmont was on the road between Langres 
and ISTeufchateau where the people were friendly 
and the food pretty plentiful. You could buy ex- 
tras for the mess, like creamy old camembert and 
— well, principally, creamy old camembert — at 
moderate prices. It was a beautiful country, too 
— hilly and green, and for dignity of proportions, 
prodigality of distribution and richness of scent 
its manure heaps were the finest the Rainbow 
Division had seen. 

Here, beyond the sound of guns for the first 
time since February, the Rainbow reveled in the 
nearest thing to a rest that it had during the 
whole of its career in France. All it had to do 
was study every branch of open warfare, with 



104 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

special emphasis on the attacking of machine- 
gun nests by advancing infantry accompanied 
by machine-guns and light artillery. On the 
Ourcq it had rehearsed this thing for six days with 
more or less assistance toward the achievement 
of proficiency by the flower of the German Army. 
But here it got a polish, an expertness that 
proved valuable later on. 

The division stayed in Bourmont until Au- 
gust 30. Immediately after the Battle of the 
Ourcq, while it was still in reserve, important 
changes had taken place in staff and in the line. 

Colonel Douglas Mac Arthur, the Chief of 
Staff, had been made a Brigadier General and 
put in command of the 84th Infantry Brigade 
comprising the Alabama and Iowa infantry regi- 
ments and the Georgia Machine-gun Battalion. 
Lieutenant Colonel William N. Hughes had been 
promoted from the position of G3 or Divisional 
Chief of Operations to Chief of Staff. Major 
Grayson M. P. Murphy became G3. Captain 
Robert J. Gill, commander of the Trench-mortar 
Battery from Maryland was promoted to the 
grade of Major and became Gl, or Assistant 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 105 

Chief of Staff, succeeding Colonel J. W. Beach- 
am. Major Stanley M. Rumbough, Adjutant 
of the 84th Brigade and Captain Walter G. 
Wolf, assistant to G3, changed places. 

Replacements, those freshly arrived, untried 
soldiers at whose advent the veteran survivors of 
hard battles look askance, and without whom no 
division could continue its career as a division, 
came to the Rainbow in great numbers. The 
gaps in the ranks were filled. Lost and battle- 
scarred equipment was replaced by new, up-to- 
date fighting material. The Rainbow Division, 
in a sort of new Camp Mills, having found its 
fighting spirit in the field, now was being made 
over — getting its second wind, so to speak. 

For great things were in the air. Other divi- 
sions besides the Rainbow were coming into this 
Bourmont area — most of them veterans also — 
for intensive training, replacements and new 
equipment. It was the gathering of the First 
American Army. The helter-skelter group of 
American divisions likely to be thrown into the 
line anywhere, was a thing of the past. On the 
soil of France a real army had been born to the 



106 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

United States. The Rainbow Division was a 
part of it. 

Greater still this army was about to start, on 
its own initiative and responsibility, without help 
or counsel from the armies of the other allies, an 
offensive against the German line. The Rain- 
bow Division was to be in it. 

It was a strange thing, but it is actually a fact, 
that the French civilians told the American sol- 
diers about this offensive before they heard it 
from their own commanders. They even pro- 
fessed to know accurately where the thrust was 
to be made. They said it would be made at St. 
Mihiel; and they were right. 

The First American Army was going to try 
to repeat in the old Lorraine salient what had 
just happened in the Soissons-Rheims salient. 
That ugly nose of the German army had been 
mashed flat, and now the same thing was to be 
done to this one. 

It is not entirely correct to say that this First 
American Army, commanded by General John 
J. Pershing, was to begin work with no help or 
counsel whatever from the other allies. Aside 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 107 

from the constant presence at headquarters of 
divisions, brigades, regiments and even battal- 
ions, of officers of the French Mission, and aside 
from the fact that most of the basic knowledge 
upon which it was expanding had been derived 
from the French and British, there was a little 
of both help and counsel now. 

The counsel came from Marshal Foch. He 
told General Pershing that unless the attack on 
St. Mihiel was made during the first week in 
September it could not be made at all on account 
of the heavy fall of rain in that section of France, 
which started at the beginning of the second week 
in the month. So the attack was set for Sep- 
tember 7. 

But as the time drew near not everything was 
ready. It was a gigantic business, this first at- 
tack, and the First American Army was func- 
tioning for the first time. For the first time its 
staff — the thinking machine that plans moves and 
battles down to the last detail — was working "on 
its own." The American fighting soldiers had 
proven themselves; there was little doubt about 
what they would do, but until now the soldiers 



108 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

who had done their thinking for them had been 
French. So St. Mihiel was not to be a test of 
the plain everyday fighting ability of the Amer- 
icans but of their generalship — their staff work. 
And it was a tremendous test. Fear that it 
would have disastrous results had moved Mar- 
shal Foch to discourage General Pershing in the 
undertaking before he uttered his counsel about 
the weather. 

Transportation difficulties arose. The move- 
ment of nearly six hundred thousand men to the 
region around Toul tied up the means of moving 
up enough ammunition and supplies for the big 
drive. The First American Army could not 
afford to make its initial effort with a shortage 
of ammunition or supplies. Complete success in 
the outcome was absolutely necessary. And so 
as it developed that September 7 would find the 
army unready to attack, the push was postponed 
to September 12, rain or no rain. 

As a weather prophet Marshal Foch made 
good. But as a judge of the American Army's 
disposition to recognize obstacles he failed. 

The Rainbow Division had started forward on 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 109 

August 30. Moving always at night and rest- 
ing during the day in inconspicuous places (for 
the attack was to be a surprise) it marched about 
one hundred and twenty kilometers to the Foret 
de la Reine. There it went into camp in shel- 
ter tents. It became a division of mud-dwell- 
ers, lying quietly in the sticky black muck all day 
and wallowing about in it through the night, for 
by daylight no movement of men or transporta- 
tion was permitted. 

Rain fell steadily and the roads became hor- 
rors. Through the downpour and the absolute 
blackness the Texans of the 117th Supply Train 
and the Kansas men of the 117th Ammunition 
Train struggled forward inches at a time with 
the deep mud sucking their trucks back and the 
pitch-dark roads seeming to fall away beneath 
them. Nearly always about twenty-five per 
cent of all the Rainbow's transportation was 
stalled impotently in the mud and wrecking 
crews were at work day and night. It began to 
look as though Marshal Foch had known some- 
thing when he said it couldn't be done. But the 
long boys from the Texas and Kansas prairies 



110 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

didn't know it couldn't be done, so they went 
ahead and did it. 

The Boche thought it couldn't be done; they 
didn't dream it was being done. It is likely that 
after the reverses in the Marne salient the Ger- 
man high command decided to withdraw from 
the St. Mihiel salient and take up a position, 
along the Hindenburg line under the guns of 
Metz. But they were in no hurry about it ; here 
were the fall rains, and who ever heard of fight- 
ing after the fall rains had started? Certainly 
not Marshal Foch. 

And while they thought these things the First 
American Army landed on them with both muddy 
feet. 

The bombardment started at one o'clock on 
the morning of September 12. It was not the 
greatest preliminary bombardment of the war; 
compared to the deafening roars of the Cham- 
pagne battle it sounded weak. But it did the 
work. There were some French Corps and 
Army artillery with the American batteries, and 
together in four hours they tore great holes in the 
trench, wire and machine-gun defenses the Gei- 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 111 

mans had perfected in the salient during four 
years. 

At five o'clock, in a pouring rain and through 
a thick mist the infantry started. 

The Rainbow Division, as part of the Fourth 
Corps under Major-General Joseph T. Dickman, 
jumped off along the southern boundary of the 
salient east of Mont Sec; its sector extended 
from Beaumont northeast to Flirey, and included 
Seicheprey, where the Germans had sprung a 
surprise attack on the 26th Division earlier in 
the year, inflicting heavy losses and capturing 
nearly two hundred prisoners. 

The Rainbow was the center division of the 
Fourth Corps, with the 89th on its right and the 
First on its left. On the right of the 89th was 
the First Corps under Major-General Hunter 
Liggett, comprising the 2nd, 5th, 90th and 82nd 
Divisions in that order from left to right. 

On the western boundary of the salient the 
Fifth Corps under Major-General George H. 
Cameron, jumped off. It included the 4th and 
26th American Divisions and a French division. 

At the point of the salient were more French 



112 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

troops who were simply to hold fast and mop up 
as the Americans, pressing in from the sides, 
closed the jaws of the pincers and squeezed the 
Boche either in or out. 

In the same smooth-working battle formation 
with which it plowed through the Germans in 
every battle — Ohio, New York, Alabama, Iowa, 
from left to right facing the enemy — the four 
infantry regiments of the Rainbow Division 
started through the St. Mihiel salient. In front 
of every platoon were the California and South 
Carolina engineers with wire-cutters and benga- 
lore torpedoes, to cut or blow out any wire en- 
tanglements that remained in the path of the in- 
fantry. 

For completeness of equipment in attacking 
material the First American Army went at the 
job of reducing the St. Mihiel salient in as per- 
fect condition, probably, as any force of soldiers 
that ever went over the top. There were tanks, 
French and American; there was railroad heavy 
artillery, trench mortars, and gas and flame- 
throwers. For the first time and the last in its 
brief but busy life, the Rainbow Division saw 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 113 

the Allies in complete mastery of the air. The 
French Independent Air Force and some Brit- 
ish bombing squadrons had been put under Gen- 
eral Pershing's command, and these, with our 
own aviators, drove the Boche airmen out of the 
sky. 

The drive moved ahead like clockwork. The 
old Seicheprey battlefield was taken by the Ohio 
infantry regiment without any trouble. On the 
right the Iowa doughboys encountered some re- 
sistance, in the woods northwest of Flirey. There 
were moments of stiff fighting for the heights in 
the vicinity of St. Bassant, but to the men who 
had beaten the German machine-gunners on the 
Ourcq, the defenders of the St. Mihiel salient 
were easy victims. 

The Germans were taken almost completely 
by surprise. What resistance they put up was 
half-hearted. Their wire-fields were old and 
rusty. Their answering artillery bombardment, 
during the actual pushing operation at least, was 
a joke. 

The path of the Rainbow through the salient 
was probably the most difficult in the whole First 



114 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Army. A road zig-zagged up through its sector 
with six villages on it, and villages, offering pro- 
tection to machine-gunners, are notably hard to 
take. But after St. Bassant, Essey fell and 
then Pannes, and there the Rainbow dug itself 
into muddy foxholes and held on for the night. 
Before them lay the villages of Beney and St. 
Benoit. 

It was at Essey that the Rainbow men saw the 
French civilians they had liberated, — the first 
French civilians to be freed from German mili- 
tary domination by an Allied victory. For 
though during the four years the battle line had 
surged back and forth over many French vil- 
lages the inhabitants of those places had long be- 
fore fled southward as refugees and their homes 
were in ruins. Here within the St. Mihiel sal- 
ient were villages that had become German prizes 
in the war's first year, that had escaped all but 
desultory shell-fire from the French, where the 
people had lived until now under German mas- 
ters. Nowhere else had the German line been 
bent to release such hostage towns from German 
rule. 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 115 

There were few wild demonstrations — little 
hailing of the deliverers with flowers and flags. 
In the dismal rain and mud the dejected old vil- 
lagers silently watched the Americans coming 
through ; they were broken-spirited old people — 
few cheers left in them. Forced submission to 
brutality for four long years had numbed them 
so that they were unresponsive to one of the most 
tlirillingly significant happenings in history. 

In Pannes there were big German military 
storehouses with queer stores in them. The 
Rainbow men, hunting around for souvenirs, 
came forth from these places, rainsoaked and dis- 
reputable-looking soldiers, carrying brand-new, 
shiny patent-leather boots and wearing high silk 
hats atop their old tin helmets. The place was 
full of patent-leather boots, silk hats and um- 
brellas. It was in Pannes, too, that they got a 
billiard table and a phonograph, both unharmed 
despite the Allied bombardment. 

Next day the attack was resumed and the line 
pushed through Beney and St. Benoit to a point 
just south of Haumont. The Rainbow Division 
had advanced nineteen kilometers, a longer dis- 



116 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

tance than any other division in the First Amer- 
ican Army, and had shared in the reduction of 
the entire St. Mihiel salient, liberating two hun- 
dred and forty square kilometers of French ter- 
ritory and capturing sixteen thousand prisoners 
and four hundred and forty-three pieces of artil- 
lery. 

But what was more important to the tired, war- 
weary world, the First American Army, acting 
independently, had demonstrated its ability to 
carry on a major offensive not only with success 
but with a smoothness and a smashing directness 
that no one would have believed possible at that 
stage of its development. The Germans had 
been swept from the salient as quickly and as 
neatly as though a broom had swished them out. 

Only in the matter of moving up the supplies 
and ammunition and in keeping the artillery 
close up behind the advancing infantry did the 
machinery of the offensive function poorly. Had 
the German power of counter-attack not been 
so demoralized by the suddenness and unexpect- 
edness of the blow there might have been disas- 
ter in this fact. 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 117 

The roads across No-Man's-Land had been 
entirely destroyed, and the condition of the 
ground and the weather made repairs difficult. 
Colonel Kelly's engineers labored incessantly to 
get the Rainbow's roads into shape, but traffic 
poured in on them from all directions, and at the 
village of Flirey there was unbelievable conges- 
tion. In four directions from the cross-roads in 
the center of Flirey were masses of from two to 
four lanes of traffic for distances of from three 
to five miles. Nothing could move in any direc- 
tion. Staff automobiles were there from three 
different divisions ; heavy artillery, tractors, sup- 
ply and ration-wagons, motorcycles and tanks — 
all locked in the most hopeless tangle. At some 
points this part of the American Army was at a 
complete standstill for twenty-four hours. 

Several well-placed shells in this mass from 
the German guns would have wrought terrible 
havoc. But all the German guns that hadn't 
been captured were being desperately dragged 
off to the Hindenburg line by an army that 
hadn't time to realize what had hit it. Intelli- 
gence found on captured prisoners showed that 



118 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

the Germans did not expect the attack during 
the rain, and that they considered it a rather 
mean thing to do — an advantage that would not 
have been taken by the French and British. 
They had been caught in the act of withdrawing 
their artillery from their old positions to the line 
of La Chaussee, where it would have inflicted 
considerable damage to the advancing Ameri- 
cans. 

Back on the Hindenburg line, however, and 
under the guns of Metz they regathered their 
scattered wits and proceeded to shell the new line 
and the rear areas heavily. Day and night they 
rained shrapnel and high explosive on the First 
American Army, not concentrating their fire on 
any particular points, but covering everything. 
For several days after the drive the St. Mihiel 
sector was the most active in the matter of artil- 
lery duelling on the whole western front. 

Brigadier-General Douglas MacArthur, com- 
manding the 84th Brigade of the Rainbow Divi- 
sion, realized this activity in time, perhaps, to 
save his life. He had established his headquarters 
in a chateau at St. Benoit, almost in the front 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 119 

lines. It was under full observation from the 
German positions. For a time it escaped the 
shelling because the Germans never dreamed that 
a brigade commander was living there, almost in 
the front line trenches. 

One day, though, several shells fell pretty close 
to it and General MacArthur decided to move 
out. And the day after he moved the Germans, 
having noted the activity around the place, 
shelled it fiercely and reduced it to a blazing, 
smoking heap of ruins. 

General Menoher, the Rainbow Division Com- 
mander, was also forced to alter plans for estab- 
lishing division headquarters in the St. Mihiel 
sector, but for a different reason. Looking at 
the map he had decided upon the village of 
Maizerais, about a half kilometer from Essey. It 
looked like a pretty good town on the map. But 
when he arrived at the spot, expecting to see a 
village with at least a few decent habitations in 
it, he found nothing. Maizerais was not only a 
ruin; it was an almost extinct ruin. Over the 
crumbled foundations of shell-shattered houses 
grass had grown; a casual observer would have 



120 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

marked it merely as an extraordinary rough- 
surfaced field. As a destroyed French town 
Maizerais held the record, so far as the Rainbow 
was concerned, throughout the whole war. So 
General Menoher established his headquarters in 
Essey. About two miles from Essey was the 
Forest of the Lovely Willow. 

There the Germans, feeling secure in the un- 
challenged possession of the land for four years, 
had built themselves a suburban village like unto 
the places tired city dwellers journey to on Sun- 
days in contemplation of a "back-to-the-land" 
movement. They had turned the Forest of the 
Lovely Willow into a pretty little bungalow 
park. 

General Menoher, abandoning Essey, took it 
over later for Rainbow Division Headquarters, 
and he and his whole staff and detachments from 
Lieutenant Colonel Ruby Garrett's Missouri 
Signal Corps — about three hundred men in all — 
lived and flourished there for several days, con- 
vinced, before they left, that the better part of 
"Kultur," as the Germans practiced it, was the 
art of being comfortable. 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 121 

Pretty rustic walks with hand railings curled 
through and around its cluster of cosy houses; 
there was one of those amusement park rifle 
ranges with a moving target ; the Offizier-Kasino 
was snugly upholstered in red, with bright elec- 
tric lamps, tasteful wall-paper, a butler's pantry 
and electric push-buttons for summoning the 
drinks or the chicken-salad. 

The rest-house for soldiers was a pretty little 
chalet with picture post-cards plastered on the 
walls, showing the German Army being joyously 
greeted in Brussels, and London crumbling into 
the Thames under Zeppelin bombardments. 

And v there were rows and rows of houses for 
officers' billets, rows of squad cottages like hunt- 
ing-lodges in the Adirondacks; a bowling alley, 
an electric power-house, a hospital, a central 
kitchen. It was a tiny model city, and to live 
there after the mud and the foxholes was some- 
what like a vacation for the Kainbow's head- 
quarters. 

Not a mine or a booby-trap had been planted 
in the whole place, so rapidly had the Germans 
left it. They had not even taken time to remove 



122 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

signs from the villages and the bungalow city, 
calling upon all soldiers who wanted to settle on 
the "conquered" land to file squatters' claims 
with their officers ! 

And now, with the new line of the First Ameri- 
can Army all consolidated and perfected, the men 
of the Rainbow Division, now holding not only 
their own sector, but that of the First Division 
on the left as well, wanted to go on to Metz. 
They felt sure they could take it. They growled 
and fumed constantly about it. But they did 
nothing except hold on to the new line under the 
constant fire of German artillery, until the night 
of September 22, four days before the opening 
of the first Meuse-Argonne offenisve on Septem- 
ber 26. 

As soon as the St. Mihiel salient had been 
reduced, artillery and reserve divisions had 
started on their way westward for this, the su- 
preme effort by the American armies. Absolute 
secrecy was essential. So in order to prey upon 
the Germans' nerves, to keep them in doubt as 
to the next attacking point, and to obtain infor- 
mation of their plans, several raids were planned 



The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 123 

and executed. Some of them had not been very 
successful. It was on the night of September 22 
that the Rainbow Division's turn came. 

Haumont, to the northwest of St. Benoit, and 
Marimbois Farm, to the northwest, were selected 
as the objectives. There were to be two raiding 
parties to strike simultaneously, one at Marim- 
bois Farm, to the northwest of St. Benoit, and 
one at Haumont, to the northeast. They were 
to be "go-and-come" raids, like the one in the 
Bois des Chiens, back at Baccarat, in May. 

Detachments of picked men were made up, 
one from M Company of the 167th (Alabama) 
Infantry, under Capt. Maurice Howe, and the 
other from K Company of the 168th (Iowa) In- 
fantry. Batteries of the Illinois (149th) Field 
Artillery regiment were to support the Ala- 
bamians and lowans. 

And to make a long story short they rushed 
over, while the artillery poured enfilading fire 
into the farm and the village; killed more than 
fifty Germans while most of them retired, fear- 
ing a general attack, and brought back twenty- 
five fine, healthy prisoners and two machine- 



124 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

guns. It was the best night's work around the 
old St. Mihiel salient since the night the salient 
had disappeared. 

At about this time there were a few changes 
among unit commanders. Colonel Mitchell, by 
the way, had led the New Yorkers of the 165th 
in the St. Mihiel drive, Colonel Frank McCoy 
having been made a Brigadier-General and left 
the division. And now Colonel Kelly, leader of 
the Rainbow Engineers, was made engineer of 
an Army Corps, and Colonel J. M. Johnson 
succeeded him, while Lieutenant- Colonel Tinley 
succeeded Colonel Bennet as commander of the 
168th from Iowa. 

And so the Rainbow Division stood, just in 
front of the Hindenburg line, now looking back 
on their part in the big American victory, now 
looking longingly toward Metz, while from the 
north and west there came to it the low rumble 
of many guns, chanting for the armies of Ger- 
many their death song. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THROUGH THE ARGONNE TO SEDAN 

Trucks at four a. m. and good-by to St. 
Mihiei! The Rainbow — a shock division now, to 
be held back like a ring-champion's best punch, 
till time for the knockout — was rushed over to 
Benoit Vaux in the autumn-tinted country be- 
hind Verdun. 

That was October 1. Three days later to Rei- 
court and on October 6 to the Bois de Mont- 
faucon, a pitiably wrecked forest, gouged and 
chewed for four years by the guns of the world's 
armies seeking to conquer and to defend Verdun. 

And now Verdun lay behind the Rainbow 
Division, while every day the roar of the battle 
beyond came down to its dead streets and its 
brave citadel fainter and fainter. And before 
the Rainbow Division lay the line of the First 
American Army righting the final battle for the 

125 



126 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

world against the armies of Germany; and the 
armies of Germany struggling with the last des- 
perate strength of trapped and beaten beasts. 
The Rainbow crouched in its black mudholes 
waiting for orders to strike. 

Again it becomes necessary (as the storm nec- 
essarily precedes the advent of the bright-hued 
bow in the sky) to paint in a gray, neutral-tinted 
background. 

When we left the Rainbow Division in the last 
chapter the breezes from the west were bearing 
toward St. Mihiel the rumble of many guns. It 
was the start of the Argonne-Meuse drive of 
September 26 — the beginning of the end. 

The echoes of the last American barrage in the 
St. Mihiel salient had scarcely died away when 
corps and army artillery and some divisions 
in reserve were starting westward for this, prob- 
ably the greatest single operation of the war. 
Their trip had ended back of the line that 
stretched from the Meuse River to the western 
edge of the Argonne Forest. On the other side 
of this line was the heart of "New Germany," 
built by the German army upon the ruins of 



Through the Argonne to Sedan 127 

France and Belgium. During four years the 
German war-making plants had accumulated 
there; there were his two great military railway 
lines, the northernmost running through Liege 
and Namur, the southernmost running through 
Longuyon, Montmedy and Sedan. These lines, 
the upper one starting at Cologne and curving 
slightly southwest and the lower starting at 
Coblentz and curving first south and then north- 
west, met and crossed east of Cambrai. 

Through them all the armies of Germany in 
France and Belgium were fed, clothed, armed, 
supplied with ammunition and reinforced with 
men. With them under control the German 
armies were wonderfully mobile; divisions could 
be shifted from one part of the line to another 
far away with great speed. Out of control— 
with the lines of the Allies so close that they 
were under bombardment by artillery, they 
would be useless. Captured at any point they 
would work the complete defeat of Germany. 
The German High Command knew all this as 
well as it knew everything else about its own 
chances for defeat or victory — which was very 



128 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

well, indeed. It was prepared to defend these 
lines to its last resources in strategical cunning 
and in men and arms. 

With Metz as a pivot the Germans were pre- 
pared to swing back slowly toward the east, with- 
drawing no more rapidly than was necessary to 
keep their railroads and stores under control, 
and, pulling their house in behind them, so to 
speak, retire eventually to their own borders and 
fight forever. They had only, while so with- 
drawing, to protect such of their railroad centers 
as Sedan, Montmedy, or Longuyon and they 
would get away in good order. 

The objective of the American offensive which 
began September 26 was Sedan, more than 
twenty-five miles away from lines that had re- 
mained virtually stationary since the fall of 1914. 

It began discouragingly enough. Endless hills 
and heavy woods were in its path. Of nine 
American divisions that jumped off out of the 
old French trenches on September 26 and started 
through the barbed- wire growths and pitfalls and 
machine-gun nests of four years' preparation, 
several came out in three days badly shot up. 



Through the Argonne to Sedan 12$ 

Many of them had had no previous experience 
whatever in the line, some had never been under 
shell-fire. In the first two days they pushed 
ahead seven kilometers, but they couldn't keep 
it up. 

Some of these divisions had been brought di- 
rectly from the training areas and plunged 
straightway into the attack on September 26. 
They had never been under shell-fire before. 
They had never heard the sound of a German 
gun or the whine of a German shell. 

There stretched up ahead of them on the left 
the great forest of Argonne, turned by Boche 
military ingenuity into an almost impenetrable, 
impregnable jungle of wire, mine-traps and 
machine-guns. Hill lay behind hill like a suc- 
cession of bumps in a roller-coaster and more 
deep forests were spread over them. Of roads 
there were virtually none. Tanks could not op- 
erate. And ten kilometers from the line the 
Germans were trying to hold with these advan- 
tages was the famous Kremhilde Line! 

And so, finally, the "veteran" American divi- 
sions had come up to relieve the "youngsters." 



130 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

The 32nd had gone in and battered at Romagne 
and Cunel without success. The First Division 
went over to the left, captured Hill 212 in dash- 
ing style, and found itself up against the Krem- 
hilde Stellung. 

l Thus the Argonne-Meuse offensive stood on 
October 13, more than two weeks after its launch- 
ing. It had slowed up ; it had almost stopped. 

The Rainbow Division, having waited for a 
week in this hell-hole of a Bois de Montfaucon, 
with the 32nd's efforts just ahead of it bringing 
the German barrages on its impotent head and 
the filth of an old battlefield soaking into its 
clothes and disposition, now got the word. It 
took over the brilliant but tired First Division's 
line north of Fleville and Exermont and got to 
work. It was in the great Argonne drive at 
last. 

7pr Tpr ^r *fr yf? t^t 

The enemy's stubborn defense of Hill 288 and 
the Cote de Chatillon had held up the advance of 
the whole army. The Rainbow's part in the ac- 
tual hard fighting in the Meuse-Argonne opera- 
tion lasted only two days, for in that time it 



Through the Argoime to Sedan 131 

broke through the defense of these hills and cap- 
tured both of them. 

The capture of the Cote de Chatillon was 
called, at the time it occurred, "one of the most 
brilliant operations of the whole war." It may 
have been called that because the effect of it was 
so immediately productive of disaster to the Ger- 
mans, and because their backward movement at 
once doubled its speed, and because everybody 
was so happy about it. For when Cote de Cha- 
tillon fell before the attack of the Rainbow Divi- 
sion, the deadlock on the Kremhilde Stellung 
ended. But the fighting there was not as des- 
perate and deadly as on the Ourcq in July. 

The 168th from Iowa and the 167th from Ala- 
bama started the attack on the two hills on the 
morning of October 14. The lowans' position in 
the line brought Hill 288 and the Cote de Cha- 
tillon directly in their path. 

One may almost guess from the briefness of 
the battle that there was little about it of the 
working out of a complicated tactical plan — that, 
on the contrary, it was the recklessness of the 
assault and the performance of individual deeds 



132 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

of courage and daring that won the fight for tha 
Rainbow. And that actually was the case, ex- 
cept that there was a tactical plan to the extent 
that the dashing assault was decided upon ( after 
every other sort of tactical plan had been con- 
sidered) as the best plan of all. 

You may best know how the hills fell by know- 
ing what the men did who took them from the 
Germans. 

For instance, with D Company of the 168th, 
under a lieutenant named Spalding, righting 
from the Bois de Romagne to the southeast of 
the Cote de Chatillon, and with hot machine-gun 
fire sweeping down from a trench on the right of 
the hill, another lieutenant named Ely went over 
with about half a platoon and cleaned out the 
whole trench, capturing twenty Germans. 

Tuilleries Farm was in the way of any ad- 
vance to Hill 288 — a vicious nest of machine- 
guns. Lieutenant Breslin of A Company went 
up there with a patrol, captured the guns and 
the Germans and brought them all back. 

They had to get 288 before they could get 
Chatillon, and the taking of 288 made Chatillon 



Through the Argonne to Sedan 133 

harder to capture because all the Germans who 
possibly could ran across from one hill to the 
other as soon as the Rainbows came upon them. 
Companies A, B and C of the 168th had reached 
la Mussarde Farm at the brow of the hill, ad- 
vancing in combat groups with everything in fine 
shape, and then the Germans had opened up with 
all they had — machine-guns, Austrian 88's, and 
minenwerfers. The Rainbow men made one dash 
for the hedgerow around the farm, and the Ger- 
mans scattered like rabbits and galloped down 
the hill and across the open to the foot of the 
Cote de Chatillon. 

A messenger on his way up to the line with a 
message for Captain William R. Witherall, then 
commanding the First Battalion, was knocked 
flat by a German bullet that hit a pair of German 
field-glasses hanging around his neck over his 
chest. The message told Witherall to go ahead 
and take the Cote de Chatillon. 

The barrage started at ten a. m., and at ten- 
thirty Wither all's men started out of the Bois de 
Romagne toward the Cote. The first men to 
come out were killed in their tracks. Watching 



134 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

carefully the woods across the clearing at the foot 
of the hill, the captain noticed that no fire at all 
seemed to be coming from one little patch of it — 
that, in fact, the Germans seemed to have turned 
their backs upon it. 

So he started a platoon of C Company across 
with Lieutenant Miller. From farther off to the 
right they came out toward this patch of woods 
at a dead run — twenty men — and not a German 
machine-gun opened up. 

With Miller's platoon now behind what seemed 
to be the Germans' main point of resistance 
around the foot of the Cote de Chatillon, things 
began to move more smoothly. Witherall saw 
a little group of machine-gunners training their 
piece upon some H Company men who were 
coming into Tuileries Farm. He leveled his 
pistol and brought down two of them, and the 
rest ducked for cover. 

Crossing the clearing himself and getting over 
safely, the battalion commander, rounding the 
back of a big dugout in the woods, came upon 
Corporal Pruett of C Company, dancing like a 
madman on the top of the dugout, waving a Ger- 



Through the Argonne to Sedan 135 

man "potato-masher" grenade and yelling, "I've 
got 'em. I've got 'em!" 

He had 'em, right enough. Sixty-four Ger- 
man soldiers and four officers were cowering in 
that dugout, in mortal terror lest Pruett should 
throw the grenade. They begged Witherall to 
call him off, which he did, and they all went back 
as Pruett's prisoners. They made this former 
Iowa school-teacher a sergeant on the spot, and 
later he got a commission and the Distinguished 
Service Cross. 

Meanwhile B Company was still in the Ko- 
magne woods under direct fire from the machine- 
guns that C Company had escaped. Sergeant 
Clark was sent with four men to round up the 
Boche who were holding up B Company. These 
five lowans silenced one machine-gun with rifle 
fire, and killed the entire crew of another. 

Whereupon B Company came out of the Ko- 
magne woods, and lounged across the clearing to 
the Cote de Chatillon, with their guns slung over 
their shoulders as though they were taking a 
leisurely hike on a peaceful country road. 

With the men scattered through the woods 



136 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

and around the German dugouts hunting for 
prisoners, word came up that the Germans were 
getting together for a counter-attack. By that 
time the Alabamians of the 167th had come up 
on the left, B and C companies of the 168th were 
reformed, and the Germans were beaten back. 

The Alabamians had had a tough fight in an- 
other part of the Bois de Romagne. They were 
facing the left slope of the Ccte de Chatillon, 
with their third battalion, under Major Morris, 
in the front and the other two battalions in sup- 
port. Before they took their side of the Ccte, 
however, joining up with the lowans, all three 
battalions were in the fight — the First under 
Major Jeorg, and the Second under Captain 
Flowers. 

Private Neibors of Idaho, an M Company 
man of the 167th, in this fight won the Congres- 
sional Medal of Honor for one of the most as- 
tounding exploits of the war. Neibors was 
wounded and left behind when his platoon rolled 
back before the ferocity of the German resist- 
ance, so that the Germans captured him. And 
that night, before they could get him out of the 



Through the Argonne to Sedan 137! 

zone of the fighting and back to a prison camp, 
he overpowered his guard and got his pistol, then 
rounded up nine more Germans and marched 
them all back into the Rainbow's lines. 

During the German counter-attack Sergeant 
Atkinson won himself a Distinguished Service 
Cross. He was a member of the regimental 
Headquarters Company, serving in the Stokes 
Mortar platoon. Being out ahead of his platoon 
and seeing the Germans starting forward, Ser- 
geant Atkinson had to think and act quickly. 
Ordinarily a Stokes Mortar is fired from a firm 
base built solidly into the ground. But Atkin- 
son had no time to build a base for his gun, so he 
held it between his knees and fired the big mortar 
bombs point-blank into the enemy. Atkinson's 
work did probably more than any other one thing 
to break up the German counter-attack on the 
Cote de Chatillon. 

The strong-points on the Kremhilde Stellung 
were now in the hands of the American Army. 
The back of the German resistance in the Ar- 
gonne had been broken at last. The great Ar- 
gonne drive could move on now. It did move 



138 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

on, starting November 1, with the greatest artil- 
lery bombardment in history, excepting neither 
the bombardments in the Champagne in July or 
in the Argonne on September 26. 

The Rainbow infantry was relieved by the 
Second Division on October 31, but the Rainbow 
artillery stayed to help with the bombardment 
next morning. This included General Gatley's 
whole 67th Artillery Brigade from Minnesota, 
Illinois, Indiana and Maryland, besides the 150th 
machine-gun battalion from Wisconsin, the 151st 
from Georgia, and the 149th from Pennsylvania. 
These machine-gunners and artillerymen plowed 
holes in the withering German defenses that the 
Germans never were and never would have been 
able to patch up. 

Having dealt the staggering blow assigned to 
it, the infantry of the Rainbow was shifted over 
to the left and given a running start toward the 
city that had been the goal of the American Army 
since September 26 — Sedan! 

They say an important telephone message flew 
quietly around to the First, the 77th and the 



Through the Argonne to Sedan 139 

Rainbow Divisions on November 1. The mes- 
sage was "Sedan regardless of boundaries !" 

This meant that each of these three divisions 
was to try to get to Sedan as rapidly as it could, 
paying no attention to the limits of its sector, 
squeezing over into another division's sectors if 
it could move more quickly by that method ; but, 
above all, to get there. 

They were to take for themselves the "right 
of way," like fire-fighting companies tearing up 
a busy street to a big blaze. The Germans were 
now retreating rapidly all along the line. 

The Rainbow Division, struggling northward 
through the terribly wrecked country, found it- 
self up against almost impassable barriers. In 
desperation Division Headquarters called for the 
Rainbow's "Fighting Engineers," the South 
Carolinians and the Calif ornians who had fought 
as infantry on the Ourcq, were ready to fight as 
infantry against the Cote de Chatillon, and were 
now hiking as infantry toward Sedan. In the 
situation that now confronted the Rainbow the 
engineers were wasting their time as infantry. 

At midnight on November 4, having gotten as 



140 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

far as Authe, Division Headquarters learned 
that the causeway across the Bar Valley, north of 
Brieulles, had been demolished by the Germans 
in their retreat. No traffic — not even men on foot 
— could get across it. The causeway had been 
about one thousand feet long, crossing a marshy 
creek, and had consisted of a "fill" fifteen feet 
high. In this artificial road the Germans had 
blown mine craters every seventy-five feet; in 
some cases the holes went far below the surface 
of the original creek bottom. 

The "Fighting Engineers" discarded their in- 
fantry equipment and reassembled their engi- 
neering tools. It took them almost all morning 
to get their stuff ready, for they had been fight- 
ing as infantry so long they had almost lost track 
of the implements of their own profession. 

With Colonel J. M. Johnson and Lieutenant- 
Colonel W. F. R. Johnson commanding the regi- 
ment, the engineers worked day and night across 
the Bar Valley. The First Battalion — all South 
Carolinians — under Major A. V. Hooks, built 
the main pass across the marsh. Major Hooks 
had a heavy cold and a high fever when his men 



Through the Argonne to Sedan 141 

began the work, but he stayed by them and com- 
pleted the job at ten o'clock on the night of 
November 6. At that hour the big trucks began 
coming across, pulled from the other side by 
gangs of soldiers with long ropes. 

On ahead of the Bar Valley bridges had been 
demolished at Petite Armoises and Sy, and two 
bridges in the forest to the south of Sy had been 
blown up. On these they put to work the Second 
Battalion from California, under Major E. B. 
Hayden. Half of his men worked with salvaged 
German engineering tools. 

Some of the engineers got one day's rations in 
three days. All of them worked under gas and 
high-explosive bombardments from the artillery 
covering the German retreat. And they went 
on, filling up holes in the roads, throwing bridges 
across ravines and streams, until, in Harricourt, 
while the Germans were still in the other end of 
the town, they pushed their repairs and lines of 
communication up to the Meuse Biver. They 
made reconnaissances of the Meuse, looking for 
possible sites for bridges, two hundred yards in 
advance of the infantry outposts. 



142 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

And what, all this time, of the First and 77th 
Divisions, to whom had come as well as to the 
Rainbow, the order, "Sedan regardless of boun- 
daries" ? 

As they had started off on November 1, the 
42nd had had the extreme left, the 77th had been 
in the center and the First had been on the right. 
But as they began nearing the River Meuse, the 
First had begun to push over to the left. The 
Meuse flowed northwest, and merely to reach the 
river bank due north of the point from which it 
had started, would find the First Division still 
several kilometers away from Sedan with no way 
to reach it except to follow the bank of the 
stream in a northwesterly direction. This the 
First had started to do. 

Of course, it ran into the 77th. The New 
Yorkers were very tired. The start of the "race 
for Sedan" had found the First comparatively 
fresh, for the Rainbow had relieved it back at 
Exermont in the middle of October, but it had 
found the 77th in the midst of the same battle it 
had been fighting for many days. So it was little 
trouble for the First to speed up a bit, cut di- 



Through the Argonne to Sedan 143 

rectly across the path of the weary 77th, and 
head northwest along the river toward Sedan. 

Now, the path of the 42nd, rough as it was, 
led directly to Sedan. 

It was on the night of November 6 that a 
patrol of the First Division, scouting out ahead 
to feel the division's way through a country that 
might be still enemy-infested, took its last 
"prisoner of war." 

A lieutenant had command of the patrol. 
They had crawled up under the cover of a stone 
wall near Beaumeil Farm, about thirty kilometers 
from Sedan. The outposts of the 165th Infantry 
— the old 69th New York — were at that moment 
in Wadlaincourt, a suburb of Sedan on the 
heights overlooking the city across the river, but 
the patrol leader did not know that. 

All he saw in the gathering dusk was an im- 
portant looking officer walking around, attired 
in what looked like a gray cape and a visored 
cap with a soft crown, not unlike those the Crown 
Prince wore in his pictures. 

Stealthily the lieutenant led out his patrol and 
eagerly they leaped upon the important looking 



144< The Siory of the Rainbow Division 

officer and made him a prisoner. And they got 
him back to a brigade headquarters of the First 
Division, before Brigadier-General Douglas 
MacArthur, commanding the S^th Brigade of the 
Rainbow Division, could convince them that it 
was himself and not an officer of the German 
Army. 

And no American division ever really reached 
Sedan. The Rainbow's patrols were the first 
into Wadlaincourt, and then, on Xovember 7, all 
the Americans were withdrawn from that point 
and the French were the first to enter the city. 

With the Rainbow out of the line in the region 
of Buzancy, eleven o'clock of the morning of 
November 11 arrived, and the war was over. 



PART TWO 



CHAPTER IX} 



ON TO GERMANY 



"Germany, hey!" growled the Rainbow 
doughboy, giving his ragged breeches a hitch. 
"How many kilomets is that? 33 

And that was all he cared about it. 

That is to say, that was all he let anybody else 
know he cared about it. It was just the Rain- 
bow doughboy's way. Outwardly nothing im- 
pressed him any more, not even the tremendous 
fact that the old Rainbow was actually going to 
march to the country of the ancient enemy, as 
part of the American Army of Occupation. 

The division moved from Buzancy to Brande- 
ville, getting into that half-ruined town the day 
after the Germans got out of it. There it waited 
until November 20, being newly equipped with 
clothes, shoes and puttees, and getting its trans- 
portation into shape. There, too, its old com- 

147 



148 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

manding general, Charles T. Menoher, left it, 
and General C. A. F. Flagler took command. 
General Menoher had led the Rainbow through 
all its battles. 

Divisions that were not going into Germany 
were stripped of motor trucks, touring cars, 
motor-cycles and side-cars to speed the Rainbow 
on the high roads to the Rhine. The crippled, 
battered things that had toiled behind the ad- 
vance on every front, that had broken their backs 
and ruptured their engines to bring up food and 
ammunition, were sent limping back to that 
happy hunting ground of all worn-out army 
equipment — the salvage dump. The German 
army had planned to march into Paris wearing 
brand-new spiked helmets. The Rainbow would 
march into Germany, all in holiday duds. 

It had a terrible time for a while, though, with 
its new pants. Some muddled quartermaster had 
sent the division a lot of clothes built for an army 
of fat men, and the stuff had to be sent back, 
while the division waited. 

But on the morning of November 20 it started. 

Bugles had awakened it before daybreak. All 



On to Germany 149 

trucks had to be loaded and ready to start by 
eight o'clock. Actually they were ready at seven „ 
o'clock. 

Brandeville, Stenay, Dun-sur-Meuse, all 
slowly were emptied of soldiers as the army from 
America streamed toward the north and east — 
herds of giant trucks, queues of plodding sol- 
diers, endless files of mingled men, horses and 
field-guns — the artillery; and the touring cars of 
staff officers weaving through traffic tangles in 
the villages and jumping out upon the high- 
roads at top speed. 

Nothing of the dreariness of war was in the 
land, unless you took a second look in at the 
doors of the deserted staff offices in Brandeville, 
and mused afterward over what you had seen. 
In front of the smoldering ashes of the log fires 
the returned exiles of Brandeville had been 
standing, surveying the old homes and preparing 
to start life again; wondering, probably, where 
the tables and chairs were coming from, what to 
have for lunch and where in the world to get it. 
For Brandeville had come back home. 

They had been standing around like that all 



150 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

morning while the men were clearing out the 
telephones and office equipment and packing up 
the trucks — standing in the corners out of the 
way of the rush and bustle, watching and waiting. 

It was peace weather, too, with a cloudless sky 
and brilliant sunshine that warmed you through 
and made beautiful sharp etchings of the roads 
ahead and the valleys below and the autumn- 
tinted woods on the hills. 

Right at the start the trip to the Rhine was 
assuming the nature of a vacational jaunt 
through a New England countryside, let us say 
— in the "Feel" of the thing, if you get the mean- 
ing. Same scenery, same sort of roads that you 
had been seeing during months of trips around 
the rear areas of rural France. But this was the 
other side of a world that had been divided for 
four years — divided as though by a great wall so 
that neither side could look over and see what the 
other side was doing. Here, suddenly, was the 
other side, disclosed to view mile by mile. 

Exhilaration grew out of this situation. The 
foot-soldiers felt it. On their backs were the 
same heavy packs they had carried on night 



On to Germany 151 

marches through rain and mud toward a morn- 
ing that would bring a battle — when no prospect 
stretched before them but more night marches 
and more battles, more rain and more mud. But 
this was bright sunny daylight, and there lay 
ahead good billets, sound slee$, leisurely going 
— and the River Rhine. 

So they were a fine-looking bunch as they 
swarmed through the valleys and over the hills — ; 
fresh-faced, clear-eyed, with a pep instead of a 
slog to their gait. 

At noon they reached Montmedy, the halting 
place for the day. 

On the outskirts of the town was the big Ger- 
man railhead for which the Allied "heavies" had 
been feeling for weeks. Broad stretches of track 
were interlaced there with trains of empty freight 
cars standing on the rails. Through the open 
door of one was a glimpse of a big printing press 
and on the outside of the car some doughboy had 
printed with a piece of chalk "Office of the Daily 
Cabbage." Across the road in a fenced-in area 
full of low frame buildings where supplies for a 
great army had been distributed, smoke tendrils 



152 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

still rose lazily from two great charred heaps of 
cabbage. 

"Darned glad they burned it up," said Private 
Birckhead, orderly to Major Bob Gill, the Assist- 
ant Chief of Staff. "If they hadn't we'd be 
havin' cabbage for mess from now till we got to 
Germany." 

Major Gill stopped his car and from the 
fenced-in area a supply captain came running. 

"Great stuff!" the captain shouted through the 
window. "We needed a lot of horseshoes and 
the Boche left two cartloads of 'em here. We've 
got Lord knows how many gallons of kerosene 
and a couple of barrels of cup-grease — just what 
we needed ; a whole heap of stuff." 

"Great stuff!" echoed Major Gill. 

So they moved on into Montmedy, where the 
fighting German had lived and moved and had 
his way with the citizenry of one of his enemies 
since 1914. They rode into "Kronprinz Strasse." 
This German street name was painted on the 
housewall and the old French name had been 
obliterated. 

French and American flags flew from the 



On to Germany 153 

upper windows of nearly every house on Kron- 
prinz Strasse. Across the top of one house two 
big signs stood, "Vive la France!" and "Hurrah 
for America!" The few people on the streets 
stopped in their tracks to gaze at the big olive- 
drab car with "U. S." painted on the side. They 
gazed stolidly and curiously without the wild 
emotion popularly imagined back home, seem- 
ingly anxious to await friendly overtures rather 
than take the initiative of a wild welcome. This 
same calm stolidity persisted throughout the city 
all day, in every Montmedy native, until they en- 
gaged in personal conversations. And then the 
attitude was like a simple, fervent, "Thank 
Heaven, it's over!" Not much gabbling and 
running about and joyful shouting. Whatever 
of that sort of thing the people of delivered 
Montmedy felt like doing they did within them- 
selves. 

Some middle-aged and aged gentlemen, un- 
comfortably dignified looking in high silk hats, 
long black frock coats and low collars with little 
bow ties of white linen, were coming out of the 
houses and walking up Kronprinz Strasse toward 



154 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

the center of the city. Little girls and boys, bear- 
ing themselves as though they had on their best 
clothes, straggled in the same direction. Women 
came forth, fussily adjusting their puff -sleeved 
jackets. Everybody's shoes, well worn and 
wrinkled, were painfully polished. A sense de- 
veloped in the air that a municipal ceremony of 
some sort was impending. 

There, in fact, was the reason for the apparent 
stolidity in the greeting to the Americans. It 
wasn't stolidity at all. It was a bit of embarrass- 
ment, like the embarrassment of a young actress 
making her debut. Montmedy was making her 
debut to-day. She had been dead for four years, 
and to-day she was being born again. Up around 
the Maire — the City Hall of Montmedy — a 
crowd stood, stirring with suppressed excitement 
whenever an automobile or a truck sped around 
the corner. A Gendarme was there, keeping 
open a broad lane leading up to the door of the 
Maire, and his bright blue uniform, his crisp 
mustache, the swell of his chest and his lofty strut 
and wave of the hand were pleasant symbols of 
a long-lost power regained. 



On to Germany 155 

Montmedy was waiting to welcome the Presi- 
dent of France and Mme. Poincare. 

The Rainbow Division straightway forgot any 
little disappointment at its failure to create a 
furore and proceeded to become citizens of Mont- 
medy. When the Chief of France and his wife 
arrived, his redeemed children and their Ameri- 
can redeemers would be there, side by side, to 
greet him. The doughboys, who got their billet- 
ing arrangements straightened out quickly, 
hustled down to the Maire and joined the crowd. 
Two military policemen from the Virginia organ- 
ization in the Rainbow Division took some of the 
gendarme's precious responsibility away from 
him and kept American motor traffic moving 
through the crowd and up the hill. The silk- 
hatted City Council raked up an American 
major-general, General Henry P. Allen, the 
commander of the 90th Division, from Texas and 
Oklahoma, which was coming to Montmedy with 
the Rainbow, and stood him in their midst on the 
Maire steps under the big sign, "Rathaus," which 
the Germans had painted over the door. 

President Poincare and Mme. Poincare ar- 



156 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

rived at one o'clock with a triumphant sweep of 
automobiles bearing a retinue of French gen- 
erals and colonels. A host of flags shot over the 
heads of the crowd, and the roar of "Vive la 
France" was repeated many times. 

It was an unhappy moment for the three little 
girls and three little boys who had been waiting 
for hours in the corridor of the Maire with 
bunches of flowers for the President and his 
wife. The little girls had been standing on one 
side of the hall and the little boys on the other, 
whispering and giggling to each other and jump- 
ing up and down to keep warm, for their mothers 
had refused to hide under coats and hats the 
glories of tri-colored hair-ribbons, white dresses 
and sashes, and combinations of blue blouses, red 
knickerbockers and white stockings. "Stand 
right there," they had been told, "and when the 
President and Mme. Poincare come through the 
hall, step forward politely and present the 
flowers." So, though a breeze swept through the 
hall, they had not moved except to jump up and 
down. 

And now the President and his wife were down 



On to Germany 157 

jthere on the steps and the crowd was piling 
around them and the little girls and boys were 
tiny atoms in the mass, with not even a glimpse 
of the faces of the chief and his wife. 

The little girls led the way in the desperate 
rush of the flower-bearers of Montmedy. They 
whispered excitedly a few moments, then 
plunged, flowers and all, into the crowd of chief 
citizens who were presenting a wall of animated 
black backs to them. The little boys followed. 
Squirming and wriggling, forgetful of the 
flowers which were badly mauled in the struggle 
— forgetful of everything but that they must 
get down there and greet the President of France 
on behalf of the children of Montmedy — thejr 
pushed through and reached the foot of the steps 
— three little girls and three little boys, with their 
carefully brushed hair all frowzy and their rib- 
bons and best clothes all awry. 

Mme. Poincare* saw them first and she aban- 
doned the town's chief citizens immediately. 
Stooping down at the imminent risk of having 
her hat and veil torn loose by the crowd, she 
hugged the little girls and kissed them, then she 



158 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

hugged and kissed the little boys. She gave the 
coat of the President of France a gentle tug, 
and he, too, bade the Mayor and Council desist 
for a moment while he pinched the little girls' 
cheeks and patted the little boys' heads, bowing 
low over the flowers and turning them over to a 
general, who turned them over to a colonel, who 
gave them to the President's chauffeur, who put 
them in the automobile. 

Luncheon was waiting on a long table in a big 
hall upstairs — more food than the folks of Mont- 
medy had seen in one place since the Germans 
came. The President of France had brought it 
in his private train that was carrying him and 
Mme. Poincare from city to city in reclaimed 
Prance. Not only was he taking with him the 
food for banquets of thanksgiving in the re- 
deemed towns and cities, but he was taking his 
own cook, his own chef and his own waitresses. 

The last the Rainbow Division saw of the 
President of France and his wife, they were trail- 
ing upstairs at the head of the procession of 
happy Councilmen, with the generals and col- 
onels and the American General, going to lunch. 



On to Germany 159 

Whereupon the Rainbow Division spread out 
through the city, for next day it would be moving 
on into Belgium, and there was no time to lose 
seeing the sights and gathering souvenirs. 

Every store was full of them, crowding up to 
the little counters behind which whole families — 
from grandparents to grandchildren — had mob- 
ilized to handle the sudden rush of trade. Long, 
lanky boys from Kansas and Indiana bought 
ruthlessly of stocks of feminine-looking frip- 
peries. Stores that had little supplies of picture 
postcards, paper and envelopes were cleaned out 
in a half hour. 

For the first time since the A. E. F. became 
an A. E. F., German money began passing back 
and forth in transactions between American sol- 
diers and the citizens of Europe. The shop- 
keepers of Montmedy had a lot of German 
money — not a lot, either, but more than they had 
of any other money. So the doughboys got back 
handfuls of marks and pfennigs in change and 
went on their way rejoicing. More souvenirs! 

Uptown was the "Deutsches Theatre An Der 
Westfront." A new show was going on inside — 



160 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

a good show now. The old one had been playing 
there for four years and it was a rotten perform- 
ance. The world had stood it as long as it could, 
then it had "egged" the actors and the whole 
stock company was beating it somewhere off 
through Belgium. 

But this new one was a peach. The sounds 
that came through the wide open windows on the 
second floor made folks on the street stop in their 
tracks and shuffle their feet. Above the ragtime 
lilt of a piano came the roar of an American sol- 
dier chorus, "Take Me to Dat Darktown Strut- 
ters' Ball!" Four soldiers, leaning comfortably 
over the withered flower boxes on the balcony 
rails, sang the song out into the street. 

A red-haired boy from Alabama was up there 
at a big grand piano, swaying himself and his 
fingers up and down the keys, and the chorus 
was crowded around him five rows deep. He was 
a wizard, the red-haired boy. He sent thrills up 
and down your back and made you stand around 
and shake your shoulders when you knew you 
ought to be examining this German theater and 
marveling at it. 



On to Germany 161 

This must have been a sort of club room for 
the German soldiery, where they assembled be- 
tween the acts and sat around drinking beer and 
singing, while somebody played the piano. The 
beer tables were still there, though some of them 
were overturned and smashed, and the floors 
were littered with debris. Every window in the 
place was smashed — not from bombing or shell- 
ing by the Allies, for the windows of houses in 
the town were still intact. Just before they left 
OVlontmedy the Boche must have fired through 
the windows from the street, for there were bul- 
let holes through the plaster in the back walls 
and splintered glass lay all over the floor inside. 

Downstairs was the theater. It was a per- 
fectly arranged little place, with seats for about 
six hundred, a good-sized stage, a gallery with a 
place where they probably worked a spotlight, 
and signs all over the walls "Rauchen Verboten!" 
The walls were paneled and tinted, the wooden 
strips a dark mahogany color and the panels a 
pale sort of orange. From the high ceiling hung 
clusters of crystal lights, shaded with orange silk. 

All this decorative artistry revealing a chapter 



162! The Story of the Rainbow Division 

in the life of the German Army, now retiring to 
its own borders in shame, meant nothing to the 
Americans upstairs. For them there were more 
thrills in standing around the red-haired Ala- 
bamian, who could make a German piano speak 
English. 

The Maryland trench-mortar battery officers 
had a dinner that night. Their billet-hostess had 
joyfully assented to a proposal that included the 
turning over of her dining-room and her table 
service for the evening, the cooking of the dinner 
and the usual cleaning up processes. All the 
officers were to furnish was the food, which, in 
Montmedy, was the main thing, the other details 
merely trailing along as pleasant accompani- 
ments, but not necessities. 

And so they dined in not a little state in deliv- 
ered Montmedy, on the second floor of the big 
house on the left and down the hill about two 
blocks, above the "Deutsches Theatre an Der 
Westfront." On clear, still nights a few months 
ago the billet-hostess and her husband and 
daughters could probably have heard the sweet 
chorus of "Hi-lee, Hi-lo" from the stage down 



On to Germany 163 

there, and caught the faint perfume of limburger 
as the skinny Dutchman hit the fat Dutchman 
in the stomach with a hoard. 

It was a great dinner. There was tender 
steak, fresh from the quartermaster, and fried 
potatoes, fresh from the commissary, and baked 
beans, fresh from the cans. And there were 
coffee and white bread and jam made of whole 
strawberries. 

With the dishes cleared away and everybody 
fixed with fresh cigarettes, the billet-hostess 
tiptoed into the dining-room with a scared smile 
and fairly flew at the opposite wall with out- 
stretched arms, as though she wanted to get there 
before somebody tagged her and made her "it." 

Now this was an ordinary-looking wall. It 
had a pale sort of paper on it and a few very 
tasteful etchings, but you could have stared at it 
for hours and never have seen anything about it 
worth running at as one would run at the last 
hot fish-cake on the free lunch counter. All of 
which establishes the fact that when Shakespeare 
said "the walls have ears" he was only partly 
right. This wall had something else. 



164 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

The lady, who was very thin and small, with a 
worried countenance on which were several moles 
trimmed with long, curling hairs, passed her right 
hand over a spot in this wall, which opened be- 
fore the officers' eyes. From the opening she 
took a bottle, blew some dust from it, and closed 
the wall so that it again looked like any other 
wall. Whereupon she turned around and ten- 
derly planted the bottle on the table and stepped 
back a pace, twisting her hands in her apron and 
murmuring. 

It was a square, fat bottle, and it bore an old 
label, "Curacao, Triple-sec." She explained that 
it had been hidden in the wall for four years, 
away from the German officers who had lived in 
her house. This was the time to bring it out, she 
thought, when "les Americains," for whom noth- 
ing was too good, were her guests. 

They told her to invite in her husband and her 
daughter, and for the rest of the evening they 
sat, all three, on the edge of the divan — the old 
gentleman with one fat cigar between his fingers 
and four sticking out of the breast pocket of his 
coat — gifts from the officers — and the lady 



On to Germany 165 

and her daughter sipping the curacao they had 
hidden for four years, stroking the moles on their 
chins and listening with rapture to the most awe- 
inspiring attempts to draw harmonies out of 
"Picture To-night a Field of Snowy White" and 
"Down by the Old Mill Stream" that had ever 
been heard. And when a member of the party 
stood up and recited the first four lines of "The 
Night Before Christmas," supplying what he 
had forgotten with extemporized gibberish and 
wild gestures, they apparently thought their 
house was being honored with the presence of a 
great American actor and probably secretly 
stored the scene away in their memories to thrill 
future generations of Montmedy. 

Next morning, through more bright autumn 
sunshine, trains of motor trucks crossed the bor- 
der into Belgium, full of young men who waved 
their winter caps, and roared "Knock the Rhine," 
which, spelled N-a-c-h and pronounced with a 
gargle, was a perfectly good German expression 
of triumph. 



CHAPTER X 

BELGIUM LAUGHS AGAIN 

Belgium came out of her cellars, bringing her 
ancient wines and her precious bits of brass and 
tapestry, when the American Army came 
through on the highroads to the Rhine. As prop- 
erly as she could, Belgium made merry. She 
had almost forgotten how — she had entirely for- 
gotten how — to make merry, as Americans know 
the term. 

But she got what merriment she could out of 
talking about her four and a half years of slav- 
ery to the men of the Rainbow Division. She 
could talk about those years now, because they 
were gone and the slavery was over. And the 
wine that was too good for the Germans, and the 
hospitality that the Germans demanded with 
threatening bayonets (and thought they were 
getting) came up from the caves that the Amer- 

166 



Belgium Laughs Again 167 

icans might make merry and teach Belgium 'to 
laugh again. 

That is what the Rainbow Division did in the 
beautiful old citv of Arlon — it retaught Belgium 
how to laugh. 

First, though, let me tell of the city of Virton, 
Belgium, close to the border between France and 
Belgium, which was the first city in Belgium the 
Rainbow Division saw on its march to the Rhine. 
In Virton it came upon the last of the German 
Army in Belgium — four hundred wounded Ger- 
man soldiers in the hospital there, with the hos- 
pital's full complement of German medical offi- 
cers and German nurses. 

They were the first Germans to live under the 
flags of the Allies. From the tower of the big 
hospital were flying, on the day the Rainbow 
Division was in and around Virton, the flags of 
France, Great Britain, Belgium and America. 

In the streets the men of the Rainbow met 
German medical officers. The situation seemed 
to produce a queer, sudden mixture of emotion 
in both Americans and Germans, and the Ger- 
mans seemed to be surer of themselves than the 



168 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Americans. Probably the Germans were more 
certain of their defeat than the Americans were 
that they believed they were defeated. At any 
rate, the Germans bowed and the Americans 
simply stared. 

Heaven knows the men of the Rainbow Divi- 
sion had seen enough Germans. They knew 
what German soldiers looked like, dead and alive 
— or, rather, first alive and then dead. Their 
ideas of what to do when they saw a German 
soldier, who was neither wounded nor a prisoner, 
included most of the things the world puts under 
the heading of "Decisive Action," but it certainly 
did not include polite bows. Until Virton they 
had seen German soldiers only on battlefields — 
most of the battlefields of the four years of the 
war. They had never seen them shopping in the 
streets of a quiet city, carrying bundles in their 
arms. 

So that it was a queer thing to watch the prog- 
ress of the young German soldier walking from 
shop to shop in Virton, and finally striking off 
up the broad, tree-aisled street to the hospital — 
a homey, comfortable street like a shady avenue 



Belgium Laughs Again 169 

in an American college town. He wore a neat- 
fitting uniform of field-gray and a gray cap like 
our fatigue cap, with a black patent-leather visor. 
He was young and slim, with a fresh pink face 
and very erect. 

Group after group of our American dough- 
boys he passed — strolling along on their way to 
the regular afternoon "parley" with French 
shop-keepers — tall, lean boys from the West and 
South; short, stout, snappy little fellows from 
the East; Americans from all over the United 
States, talking about home, old fights, the com- 
ing arrival in Germany, how much money they 
had, what the cooks were "coming across with," 
how they had bawled out the Sergeant that morn- 
ing and would do it again if he got gay, and what 
they were going to buy. 

And whatever they were talking about, they 
stopped it when they saw the young German 
soldier with the bundles. 

His head was up and his eyes ahead like a man 
on parade, but as he passed the American groups 
he turned his eyes toward them, inclined his head 



170 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

slightly with a murmur that was unintelligible, 
and passed on. 

Now, apparently, those groups of Americans 
thought no more of returning that bow than they 
would have thought of returning the bow of one 
of the camels in a circus parade. 

"For Pete's sake, did you see that bird bow 
his head?" 

"Yeah — whad d'ye know about that? Mus' 
think he knows us !" 

"He prob'ly knows ole Slim here. Prob'ly 
tended bar back home in some rathskeller where 
old Slim used t' hang out." 

"Yeah, and he can take me back to that ole 
rathskeller toot-sweet if he wants to. Jus' so he 
don't put no knockout drops in my beer, that's 
all." 

"Won't be any beer when you get back there, 
Slim. All be drinkin' prune juice or somethin'." 

"Tell yuh what I bet about these Goimans," 
said a little black-eyed soldier with curly black 
hair and a high curved nose. "Bet yuh they've 
been told to try to get in good with the American 



Belgium Laughs Again 171 

Army so people won't believe these stories about 
killin' babies an' boinin' choiches." 

"Well, they gotta do somethin' more'n bow to 
get in good with me. Cap'n says don't frat-nize 
with 'em, and y' ain't goin' to see me frat-nizin'." 

"I wouldn't trust ole Slim if one of 'em says 
'Slim, come on in an' have a stein o' Pils'ner 
beer/ " 

"Well, now, mebbe," Slim began — and then 
they were out of earshot and heading toward a 
postcard shop that had a window full of pictures 
of Virton. 

If the orders in the retreating German Army 
bade those left behind to "try to get in good" with 
the American Army, they were certainly useless 
orders, so far as the Rainbow Division was con- 
cerned. In Virton an American second lieuten- 
ant put a German medical lieutenant out of his 
billet. The German had lived there nearly four 
years — as long as the hospital had been in opera- 
tion. He had German pictures on the walls — 
scenes of the "Fatherland," groups of soldiers, 
girls, and so on — and he had made a homelike 
place of the room, with an electric light at the 



172 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

head of the bed and a reading lamp on the table 
and all his books and records in orderly cabinets 
around the walls. 

But the town major having in charge the list- 
ing and distribution of the billets did not take 
into account the fact that any part of the German 
Army was still in Virton. So far as he was con- 
cerned the German Army had gone away from 
there and was still going. So this billet in the 
home of a French woman came to be listed among 
the billets available for officers of the Rainbow 
Division. 

They say the German was scribbling away at 
his table, telling the folks he'd be home soon, or 
something, when an American soldier, the lieu- 
tenant's orderly, came bumping through the 
door, bending under a bedding roll as big as a 
piano, and dumped it down on the floor with an 
awful thud. Behind him came the young Ameri- 
can officer with a musette bag over his shoulder 
and a suitcase. Behind the American officer 
came the lady of the house. 

The German rose, dropping his inky pen on 
the paper — plainly astounded. 



Belgium Laughs Again 173 

"I think this is my billet," said the American 
coolly, picking a corner occupied by the Ger- 
man's spare boots to deposit his bag and suitcase, 
and removing the boots in the process. "Yes?" 
said the German. He spoke English well. He 
hesitated a second. "I have lived here for four 
years," he ventured. "Yes?" said the American. 
Then to his orderly, "Any water in that pitcher, 
Harry? If there isn't, ask the Madam to get 
some, will you? I want to wash up." 

Without another word the German left, and 
came back with his own orderly, and they both 
proceeded to move out the German's house fur- 
nishings, while the American sloshed his face and 
head and neck in the cold water, brushed his 
teeth and hair, and distributed his razor and toilet 
articles around on the wash stand. Not a word 
of conversation passed between the American 
and the German until, as the latter was leaving 
with the last of his stuff, the American looked 
up from a manicuring operation, and said, 
"Sorry, old scout !" The German closed the door 
softly, with never a reply. 

Wads of francs from the parts of France the 



174 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Germans had not reached piled into the little 
money boxes of the Belgian storekeepers, who 
searched their poor stocks of goods again and 
again to find things that the Americans wanted. 
The money of their own country was returning 
to them and the marks and pfennigs they had 
accumulated during the German occupation went 
into the pockets of our doughboys. 
- They were poor enough stocks of goods, 
Heaven knows, what with the ravages of the 
Boche in the last hours before he left. But as 
though they were business folk who had just com- 
pleted a big deal, American soldiers and Virton 
citizens sat down to dinner together that night 
in many a Virton kitchen or dining-room, and 
savory broiled steak and hot French fried pota- 
toes right from the company's cook, lay in lordly 
state on hot platters before them, and Madam 
poured the coffee and sat down in the midst of 
the young Americans, not understanding a word 
of the jokes they roared at, or the stories they 
listened to so eagerly. But they were happy — 
Madam and Monsieur, and the blushing Made- 
moiselles — in contemplation of the serene-faced, 



Belgium Laughs Again 175 

clear-eyed boys from America, and of their hon- 
est laughter and sincere interest in Madam and 
Monsieur, and the blushing Mademoiselles, and 
of their shameless appetites for food. 

From Brandeville through Montmedy and 
Virton and beyond, Northern France and South- 
ern Belgium had seemed strangely well-pre- 
served for having been war countries for four 
years. Even near Montmedy, supply depot on 
the Germans' main army railroad line between 
Longuyon and Sedan, which had been within 
range of our great naval guns during the last 
weeks of the war, the earth was but little torn 
with shell-fire and the villages scarcely at all. 
Over this country the hastily-formed armies of 
France had fallen back during the fall of 1914, 
offering little resistance to the steady, thoroughly 
planned advance of the German force, and the 
villages and fields here lay just as they were when 
the horses of the Uhlans had pranced into them 
and they were claimed for Germany. 

Before noon, though, rolling onward through 
Belgium, the Rainbow Division came upon the 
war's first ruins — the wreckage wrought when 



176 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

black despair was first settling over Europe, by- 
guns so big that the people blanched with terror 
at the very mention of them. 

They were ordinary ruins, just like those the 
Rainbow had left in France. People walked 
among them trundling wheel-barrows or pulling 
little carts, and most of them were women — old 
women. There were a few children who stood 
and stared at the slow column of horses, wagons, 
motors, guns and men. They did not wave their 
hands or clap them. What these tiny Belgium 
children knew about soldiers didn't call for wav- 
ings or clappings of hands. Here and there an 
older girl, standing by a tangled pile of rocks 
that had been her home, waved one hand steadily 
as though she had that day set that hand aside 
for waving purposes and no other. The older 
girls understood the slow moving column of olive- 
drab. 

Shortly afternoon the Rainbow Division 
reached the city of Arlon. 

Crowning a broad hill, unobscured from view 
for a mile along the broad, shady road, Arlon lay 
shining in the sun like descriptions of old Jeru- 



Belgium Laughs Again 177 

salem — "with tow'rs of gold and diadems of 
snow." Old Rainbow veterans, starved through 
long months of fighting among wrecks of towns, 
for the sight of a big city, rounded the curve of 

the road and saw it. "Wot th' ," they said, 

and waxed speechless. 

All day the Rainbow rolled into Arlon, and 
Division Headquarters was established in the 
center of the city in the great government build- 
ings on the Place, where in some of the rooms the 
silk-covered furniture, tapestried walls and rich, 
thick carpets were unhurt, and in others were 
worn and slashed and heaped up with dirty, 
worn-out German gas masks and abandoned 
ammunition cases. It was beautiful, the interior 
of this great building — with the beauty of an 
empty conch-shell. Hand-carved cases that had 
held precious bronzes were opened and empty, 
the faces of richly carved old "Grandfather 
clocks" were empty, the walls bare of pictures, 
the heavy tables bare of covering. 

American automobiles standing in the Place 
were wonderful museums of new things for the 
children, who clambered into them and bounced 



178 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

up and down on the cushioned seats, wiggled the 
clutches and brakes and begged to be taken for 
rides. The humblest looking doughboy, who 
probably hadn't drawn a new pair of shoes and 
leggings yet, and who had lost a couple of but- 
tons from his overcoat during the morning mrrch, 
was eyed, as he walked past the shops, like a 
million dollar movie star, and wealthy old Arlon- 
ites struggled to think of enough English to ask 
him to dinner, ending the struggle by dragging 
him off. 

There was a host of dinner parties in Arlon 
that night, furnished forth, as these parties in 
redeemed France and Belgium always are, with 
some things brought by the soldiers in their own 
hands and some things brought from the dark 
cellars by the citizenry. For a dinner party in 
Arlon, or anywhere else in Belgium, was a diffi- 
cult problem for a Belgian to handle alone. All 
the butter, eggs, sugar and meat that the retreat- 
ing German army could lay its hands on, it had 
taken away when it left Belgium. Sometimes 
the Germans had asked the price, and sometimes 
they hadn't, though nearly always they had laid 



Belgium Laughs Again 179! 

down a few marks, so that the transaction would 
be only semi-robbery. 

But the Belgians supplied the wines from their 
hiding places in the cellars, and from the same 
hiding places they brought up their best old silver 
table services and their snowy linens, and their 
bronze statuary. Lights went up, and old clock 
faces of brass, cut out and hidden from the brass- 
hungry Germans, went back into the clocks, and 
there was band music and a glory of colored 
rockets in the Place at night, and parading and 
shouting through the streets. 



CHAPTER XI 



SO THIS IS GERMANY 



On December 4, after a two-day trip from 
Mersch, Luxembourg, Headquarters of the 
Rainbow Division reached Welschbillig, a muddy 
little German village of about four hundred peo- 
ple. The Red Cross man who got up there first 
so urged his "Tin Henry" that it navigated open 
fields, ditches and steep embankments, passing 
several miles of field artillery, infantry, machine- 
gun battalions, engineer, ammunition and supply 
trains, staff limousines, and other miscellaneous 
vehicular and foot traffic, which was either stuck 
in the mud, pulling up to let something pass in 
the opposite direction or halting from sheer 
fatigue. 

The "Tin Henry," running on a thimbleful 
of gas, rattling in every rib, asthmatic, rheumatic, 
full of grip and pneumonia, caught up to the 

180 



So This is Germany 181 

tail of the column in Echternach, passed through 
the completely blocked streets by climbing on 
the sidewalks, crossed the bridge over the Moselle 
behind a mule-drawn machine-gun cart from the 
Wisconsin battalion, and brought bitterness into 
the hearts of foot soldiers and limousine staff 
officers alike by disappearing over hill after hill 
and around curve after curve, so that it was in 
this one-night stand by four p. m., or in time to 
get a billet in the home of one of the best fam- 
ilies of Welschbillig. A cream separator buzzed 
away downstairs, and somebody was working 
overtime down in the barn, running an electri- 
cally operated threshing machine. 

Jingoism had gained wide influence through- 
out the Rainbow Division during its ten-day halt 
on the borderland between Luxembourg and 
Germany. There were great expectations of 
sniping by the German population. Since it was 
virtually useless to hope for Christmas at home, 
the Rainbow Division hoped for a guerrilla war- 
fare in Germany. The more imaginative among 
them conjured up pictures of themselves sneak- 
ing from doorway to doorway in Berlin, exchang- 



182 The. Story of the Rainbow Division 

ing shots with members of the Reichstag con- 
cealed in second-floor bedrooms, or of a greeting 
from across the border with a fusillade from the 
farmers' shotguns. 

But the only fusillade that greeted them came 
from the official United States Army moving 
picture cameras set up on the German side of the 
Echternach Bridge. And from there all the way 
up to Welschbillig soldiers who hoped for any 
more excitement than that arising from trying 
to move three-ton trucks up slippery hills were 
disappointed. 

But in the disappointment there was as much 
to talk about and to argue about around the field 
kitchen and billets as there would have been if a 
Sniper had opened up from each tree along the 
road. The Welschbilligians, instead of being 
guerrilla fighters, were trying to be regular folks. 
Instead of potting the men of the Rainbow Divi- 
sion with shotguns, they bombed them with cups 
of hot barley coffee, gobs of honey, and armfuls 
of firewood. 

It was the first experience of the men of the 
42nd Division as occupants of the homes of the 



So This is Germany 183 

nation it had been fighting every day for a whole 
year. They were not quite sure what to do. 
There were General Headquarters orders against 
"fraternizing" with German villagers. "Offi- 
cially" the country was hostile. The business of 
the American Army here was to stick to the heels 
of the retreating German Army. Theoretically, 
it was a pursuit. For every purpose, except the 
purpose of killing, the war was still on and the 
armies were still in the field. 

But you couldn't fight old women who came 
hobbling into your offices at the head of parades 
of a dozen kids, all loaded down with firewood. 
And you couldn't turn an unfraternal back on 
old men who came in bringing chairs for the 
office force to sit on. It put the Rainbow Divi- 
sion in something of a dilemma. 

There was a decided dilemma that evenmg 
around the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff 
in charge of Transportation and Supply. Lieut. 
Marcus L. Poteet was running the office, while 
Major Gill's temporary successor, Major Ber- 
tram, was attending to some work in his Intelli- 
gence Department. 



184 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Every two or three minutes there came shuf- 
fling into this office an old woman — bent almost 
double — chuckling toothlessly, and wringing her 
hands, and mumbling in German. She went al- 
ways first to the stove and looked into the grate 
— an easy operation for her, for she had never to 
stoop over; stooping was her constant attitude. 
Then, with plentiful gestures of her stiff old 
hands, she'd poke a fresh stick of wood into the 
fire. Then she'd turn around and make a brief 
address, rapidly bobbing her head, which was 
wrapped in a black shawl. 

Lieutenant Poteet and Private Cooney and 
Sergeant-Ma j or Walter Davis were a little leery 
during her first two or three visits. When she 
ambled out after feeding the stove the first time 
they braced themselves for a few seconds and 
held their breaths in case the stick of wood might 
have been a disguised bomb. But nothing hap- 
pened either that time or the next, or the next, 
so when she turned around from the stove after 
the fourth time, and made her little speech, Lieu- 
tenant Poteet unbent and responded with a 
hearty "Yah, yah, yahl" 



So This is Germany 185 

In two minutes she was back with a pot of 
coffee which she planted on the stove. Her 
daughter followed, bearing a deep bowl full of 
fried potatoes. Her son, a discharged German 
soldier with little piggy eyes and a friendly smile 
under his Kaiser mustache, brought up the rear 
with both fists full of knives and forks and a red 
tablecloth under his arm. 

"For Pete's sake, they're fraternizin'," said 
Sergeant-Major Davis, "What're y' goin' to 
do?" 

"I'm goin' to eat," said Private Cooney. So 
everybody sat up to the table, while the thin, 
rather cross-eyed daughter went back to the 
kitchen to bring up the plates and cups. 

The coffee was poor stuff, being made out of 
charred barley, so they put into each cup a spoon- 
ful of the self-made coffee which the Army car- 
ries around. But the potatoes were fine, and 
when they had cleaned out the bowl, the old lady 
came stooping in with another bowlful, and the 
daughter brought in a dish of honey, and the 
ex-soldier got on his knees and poked around the 
fire, and six muddy, greasy children came in with 



186 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

more wood, did squads-left-into-line, dumped it 
on the floor, squawked "Abhtung" and goose- 
stepped out in single file. It was a full half- 
hour before the adults of the family stopped 
standing around, grinning and muttering and 
watching them eat. 

When they finally cleaned up the dishes, rolled 
up the tablecloth and left, Lieutenant Poteet 
took a deep pull on a fresh cigar and announced : 
"The next man that says 'Yah' to that old woman 
gets court-martialed. One more 'Yah' and she'll 
be in here giving everybody a shave, a haircut 
and a bath, and that'll be fraternizing." 

In muddy streets and plaster walls and smells 
and general dreariness on a wet, misty day, this 
village in Germany was not unlike villages of 
the same population in France. The Rainbow 
was going through the Rhine provinces, which, 
judging from one day's journey, consisted of vast 
expanses of forest, field and mountain, with 
widely scattered villages. 

The open country of France rolled gently and 
the broad, smooth roads opened long vistas, and 
you shot along on a straightaway for miles and 



So This is Germany 187, 

miles. But from Echternach to Welschbillig 
there had been a succession of hill climbings and 
coastings, with hairpin curves every few hundred 
feet. Towering mountains rose before you, and 
a view of a winding road was lost in forest a 
short distance ahead. But with a series of twists 
and turns and a constant pull up grade after 
grade, you found yourself on the very top of the 
forest and the ribbon of road you had just left 
below looked like a cowpath. More mountains 
on all sides hemmed in your range of vision. 
There was a majestic grandeur about it all with 
its vast, deep silence, and it would have been more 
thrilling if one hadn't had to contemplate it all 
with real doubt that one was going to make the 
next hill, and the next, and others beyond. 

Thousands upon thousands of American 
doughboys — walking with their packs on their 
backs, piloting three-ton trucks almost as wide 
as the roads themselves, driving raw-boned mules 
and horses already tired to death with life and 
the hauling of heaving wagons and cannon — all 
had to make those hills to reach the Rhine. 

Most of the men of the 42nd had finished the 



188 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

first stage of the march and were settled that 
night in the kitchens and attics here around 
around Welschbillig. They knew the rule 
against "fraternizing," but all the rules in the 
world couldn't keep an American soldier from 
making himself at home, even though a picture 
of a man his own regiment killed in the Cham- 
pagne a few weeks ago hung over his head as he 
tilts his chair against the dining-room wall. 

That thing happened in Welschbillig. The 
dead German soldier's mother was pottering 
around the fire, where the Yank's mud-soaked 
shoes were drying, and the little sisters and 
brothers — nearly a dozen, all told — were lurking 
at more or less of a distance, looking at his socks 
and his clothes and his face, and urging each 
other to go up and feel of his belt and pistol that 
hung over a chair. 

If fraternizing consisted of taking what came 
your way and making the best of it, then the 
Rainbow Division in Germany was composed of 
the greatest thirty-third degree fraternizers in 
the world. 

They fraternized that night, too, down where 



So This is Germany 189 

the officers of the Missouri Signal Battalion were 
quartered — in the village schoolhouse, where the 
schoolmaster lived — but it was fraternizing of a 
different sort. The schoolmaster spoke a little 
English, and Col. Ruby Garret and the other 
Signal officers wanted to know how the people of 
Germany felt about the war, now that it was all 
over. The schoolmaster was convinced that the 
Kaiser was all right ; he had had a bunch of un- 
fortunate rough-necks for friends, that was all. 
If he had had his way the war never would have 
started. But all Germany was glad it was over, 
he said. 

Unlike the farm villages of France, Welsch- 
billig's muddy street corners had electric lights, 
and there were electric lights in some of the rough 
plaster houses, and instead of great open chim- 
neys there were shiny enameled stoves. And 
there were modern mechanical things like the 
cream separator, and the threshing machine — 
entirely unknown in rural France, apparently — 
which were still buzzing merrily away, though it 
was ten o'clock. Bits of the old "Kultur," un- 
doubtedly. 



CHAPTER XII 



DIE WACHT AM RHEIN 



Up at seven o'clock, on the road through a 
thick fog, and into Speicher by noon, twenty-five 
kilometers from Welschbillig. The third day of 
the Bainbow Division's march to the Bhine across 
German soil was almost over and to-morrow it 
would move on to Birresborn. 

The long brown columns were filtering deeper 
into Germany. As the Belgians did when the 
Germans came through in August, 1914, the 
German villagers went to bed now with the rum- 
ble of the American column in their ears and 
awoke in the morning still hearing it, and moved 
about through the day still seeing it, and dropped 
off again to sleep without seeing or hearing the 
end. 

They knew now what had really happened on 
the fighting front while the General Staff of the 

190 



"Die Wacht Am Rhein" 19X 

German Army had fed them on fairy tales of 
victory and requisitioned their poultry and butter 
for Berlin. 

This village, where they stayed overnight like 
an immense troupe of barnstormers, was bigger 
than Welschbillig. It had a fair little hotel with 
one bathtub that was full of spare bed clothing 
when they arrived. The bed clothing had since 
been stored elsewhere, for Col. Ruby Garrett 
managed to close a deal for a bath in the tub. 
The beautifully enameled hot-water attachment 
on the tub was out of order so they heated the 
water on the kitchen stove downstairs, and a 
broad-backed German girl brought it up in five 
trips, carrying two buckets each trip — five 
buckets of hot water and five buckets of cold. 
She also cleaned out the tub and pulled down the 
shades in the window and switched on the light 
and brought in a rug for the floor and showed 
signs of wanting to assist at the scrubbing fes- 
tivities. So far there seemed to be nothing the 
Germans would not do to make the American 
Army of Occupation feel at home. 

The wife of the proprietor of the hotel (he, 



192 The Story of the Bainbow Division 

by the way, fought against the British at Cam- 
brai and was gassed) even smoked a cigarette. 
She was clearing off the table after a lunch for 
six officers, and a sportive major thrust his 
cigarette case toward her and nodded brightly. 
With her free hand she very gingerly took one 
and started to stick it in the pocket of her apron. 
"No, no !" insisted the major, and struck a match. 
So she put the cigarette between her lips and 
went out toward the kitchen puffing it, with her 
arms full of dishes. 

A minute or so later the ex-Boche soldier 
walked past the kitchen door on some errand and 
he was smoking his wife's cigarette. 

They probably got the idea that it was the 
custom for American women to smoke and that 
they must do it, too, or the American soldiers 
would lose their tempers and shoot up the town. 
When a red-cheeked waitress came in to brush 
away the crumbs and the major tried the same 
stunt on her and she stood there flustered and 
uncertain, Mrs. Proprietor spoke quickly and 
quietly to her and she took the cigarette. After 



"Die Wacht Am Rhein" 193 

one puff she fled from the dining-room, cough- 
ing and gasping, and she didn't come back. 

An old man whose son and daughter-in-law 
run a little souvenir and postcard shop here used 
to live in Baltimore, he said. He had worked in 
a steamStter's shop and his most vivid recollec- 
tion of the city, after having been back in Ger- 
many for twenty-six years, was of the smells that 
came up from the waterfront. One of the Bal- 
timoreans he remembered best was Friederich, 
who, he declared, built the City Hall. 

"An' dere was Schultz — he voss a Choiman!" 
he'd say, trying to remember old names. "An' 
Deiterich — he voss a Choiman. An' Gus 
Schaefer — he voss a Choiman. Dey voss all 
Choimans." 

One gathered that the Baltimore of twenty-six 
years ago was probably a suburb of Berlin, but 
the old man said he had known a lot of other men 
there who weren't Germans, but he couldn't re- 
member their names. He tried to sell the offi- 
cers some pipes with deep porcelain bowls deco- 
rated with landscapes, with curved stems three 
feet long and decorated with tassels and things, 



194 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

which they would have bought if they had had 
trucks or something to carry them. 
L He also whispered with a great show of se- 
crecy that nobody in Germany liked the Kaiser 
— that he had always been a "voitless bum" 
(those were his exact words — "a voitless bum"), 
and that the "people in Berlin" were responsible 
for everything the Germans had done during the 
war. 

"Dese poor peoples oudt here didn't have nud- 
ding to do wid it," he said. "Dey shouldn't pay 
der bills, should dey?" 

They told him it looked very much as though 
the "poor peeples oudt here" would have to chip 
in a little because everybody else seemed to be 
trying to crawl from under, like himself. He 
looked very much hurt. 

That evening down at the Gasthaus Geisler, 
a bunch of our doughboys permitted themselves 
to be hypnotized by a curly-haired German boy 
of nineteen, who was performing miracles on the 
piano in the room adjoining the bar. One of the 
Louisiana Headquarters Troop men had been 
reeling off some ragtime with a rather painful 



"Die Wacht Am Rhein" 195 

two-fingered bass that was always consistent but 
not always harmonious, when the boy came in 
and stood peering at the crowd through a pair of 
thick spectacles. In the moment or two of si- 
lence that followed his entry, he said in perfect 
English: "Would you like me to play a lit- 
tle?" 

"Sure, go ahead!" the soldiers chorused, and 
the Headquarters Troop man got up from the 
piano. 

The German boy sat down, rubbed his stiff 
curls, adjusted his spectacles, struck a few ring- 
ing chords and launched into "The Star Span- 
gled Banner." 

He played for more than an hour without look- 
ing at a note of music. "This is by Schumann," 
he'd announce, and then, "Here's a Beethoven 
sonata," then "This is an American song, isn't 
it?" and he'd play something from light opera. 
Some of the other things he played were also 
from light operas that were first produced in 
America but the German boy did not recognize 
them all as bits of American music. It was evi- 
dent that they had been picked up bodily from 



196 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Germany or Austria and imported to American 
orchestra pits. 

Just before the end, Mike, the Italian attache 
of the Casual Officers' mess; Steve, the waiter; 
the top -sergeant of the Headquarters Troop, two 
military policemen with sidearms on and a 
sprinkling of miscellaneous soldiery from the 
United States of America were frozen in vari- 
ous attitudes around the back room of this lit- 
tle German cafe, leaning on the table, half -lying 
in chairs, hunched on the floor in corners, while 
the oil lamp swinging from the ceiling burned 
up unnoticed with a black smoke and the curly- 
haired German musical prodigy played "The 
Barcarolle." Rippling brooks in New England — 
the old canoe floating up the Potomac toward a 
red Sunday sunset — moonlight on the upper 
deck! 

With a swift change of mood the boy struck 
up "Die Wacht Am Rhein," and the shaven- 
headed old lad who had been tending bar came 
waltzing in, waving his long pipe and roaring the 
song. The doughboys looked at him and grinned 



"Die Wacht Am Rhein" 197 

a pitying sort of grin, but Mike, the Italian at- 
tache, glowered. 

"Steve," he whispered to the waiter for the 
Casual Officers' mess, "Steve, you crown him for 
me, will you? I ain't got the heart." 



CHAPTER XIII 



'the conquering of the highroad" 



Next morning, on its way to Birresborn, the 
Rainbow Division began a heart-breaking battle 
with the roads of Germany. Like the German 
Government and the German Army, they had 
broken — gone to pieces. Collapsing under the 
steady rain and the hacking hoofs and wheels of 
the invading American column, they were trying 
to halt the Rainbow in its march upon the Rhine. 
It is as though they believed the last struggle was 
up to them. 

Our soldiers had been smelling it in the dis- 
tance, this battle. In the mountain climbs, the 
hairpin curves, the slippery slopes that began on 
the German side of the border there were prophe- 
cies of it. But they didn't expect it to be as 
tough as it proved to be. 

Staff officers were climbing out of the leather 

198 



"The Conquering of the Highroad" 199 

cushions into the mud this particular morning, 
to push. The main road between Speicher and 
Birresborn that stacked up on the maps with the 
main roads of France, were mudholes. They 
looked like the "before" photographs in adver- 
tisements of paving material. The edges were 
miles of sticky strawberry jam, with no limit to 
its depth. The two deep ruts down the middle 
made by the wagons of the retreating German 
Army were snares and delusions. Worried 
truck drivers and harassed staff chauffeurs 
picked these ruts instinctively, as a locomotive 
picks the rails; within two hundred yards their 
only conceivable salvation had tripped them. 
The ruts were too deep ; sometimes the wheels of 
lighter cars were clear of the bottoms ; the heav- 
ier cars were mortised-and-tenoned in the road- 
bed. 

And the roads squirmed and curved and 
climbed, and at least one edge of most of them 
was also the edge of a precipitous descent through 
wild forests and rocks. 

Under the best conditions it was not the easi- 
est thing in the world to pick up an American 



200 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Army Division and move it, holding it together 
during the moving and keeping it fit for the ex- 
ercise of its profession at every moment. Still 
less easy was it to move an American Army di- 
vision every morning and set it down to rest every 
night, repeating that process day after day and 
night after night and covering twenty-five kilo- 
meters or so every day. 

The strength of the Rainbow Division march- 
ing into Germany was, roughly, twenty-three 
thousand men, about the population of the city of 
Cumberland, Md. Nearly four thousand gal- 
lons of gasoline were required to keep its motor 
transportation moving for one day. Its truck- 
carrying capacity was close to one thousand tons. 
It had between two hundred and seventy-five and 
three hundred giant trucks. Its smaller auto- 
mobiles numbered about forty. 

The dope seemed to be that the Rainbow 
would reach the Rhine by December 17. The 
division had started into Germany on December 
2. Looking ahead, the Rainbow's Quartermas- 
ter, Lieutenant- Colonel George F. Graham, of 
Texas, must have figured that he would have to 



"The Conquering of the Highroad" 201 

use sixty thousand gallons of gasoline on the trip 
at the lowest estimate. To carry sixty thousand 
gallons of gasoline for fifteen days would be as 
impracticable and unwise as to carry food suf- 
ficient for that length of time and in such enor- 
mous quantities. Simple principles of conserva- 
tion dictated adherence to a "base-of -supplies" 
system. 

So that when the 42nd Division pulled up for 
the night and announced to the German villag- 
ers, "We'll stop here; come across with the keys 
to the city," it did not mean that the day's travel 
was over. Several hundred tons of trucks had 
still to go back to the railroads and bring up the 
food and gasoline for another day — the food and 
gasoline and equipment to replace the wear and 
tear of the day's grind. 

Imagine moving Cumberland, Md., like that 
every day, or Chillicothe, Ohio, or Stamford, 
Conn., or Pensacola, Fla. 

The Rainbow Division, veterans of the whole 
American Expeditionary Force in point of 
length of continuous service in the fighting line, 
was accustomed enough to moving. It had done 



202 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

more moving from one part of the line to another 
than any other American division, with a fight at 
both ends of the move more often than not. Mov- 
ing was nothing — mere detail in the day's work. 
And so far as moving through G ermany was con- 
cerned, why, that would be a vacation. No 
shellholes to get the traffic across, no ripped-up 
roads, no night marching, no fighting. Great! 
Certainly would like to be going home, the 
42nd Division would, but this was the next best 
thing — seeing Germany, soldiering de luxe. 
Why, this was a pretty fair reward for a year of 
the most terrible work human men can be called 
upon to do. To be sure, some birds were being 
sent back home, but they were replacement divi- 
sions mostly. Never had seen a fight, some of 
them hadn't. Let 'em go ! This Germany trip 
was the thing! 

That v/as the spirit back in Brandeville, 
France, when the 42nd was waiting for its 
new equipment to come up — its new trucks, 
more trucks than it had ever had before, and its 
new clothes and its new passenger automobiles. 
That was also the spirit through Belgium and 



"The Conquering of the Highroad 1 ' 203 

Luxembourg, where the days dawned clear and 
warm, and where the work of "occupation" was 
about as arduous as strolling through the old 
cherry orchard. 

Yet, on this move to Birresborn an officer said, 
"When they pick an Army of Occupation after 
the next war, count me out!" 

And a supply officer said, "I'd rather supply 
three regiments in the front line of an attack 
than try to keep stuff moving up behind one regi- 
ment along roads like these." 

And there was expressed in various ways the 
sentiment that fighting a war is preferable to oc- 
cupying the conquered enemy's country, when 
the country is the inhuman sort of country that 
this German country is. Forever, in the minds 
of the Rainbow Division men (I can't speak for 
men in other parts of the Army of Occupation) , 
Germany will stand as the symbol of the utmost 
in rotten roads, just as France will stand as the 
symbol of the best. And this discovery of how 
demoralized roads can become, is apt to bring 
about a revolution in our American road plans, 



204 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

when these victims of Germany's broken-backed 
roads get settled at home. 

A detachment of two hundred men worked 
from truck to truck that day along the roads be- 
tween Kyllburg and St. Thomas, pulling them 
out of the mire and the ditches. It took the com- 
bined strength of every one of these two hundred 
men to move these trucks, for they were loaded 
with tons of supplies. Sometimes the releasing 
of one truck opened the way for a whole train 
of others that were not heavily loaded. Some- 
times the crew of two hundred truck-pullers had 
to tow each truck several hundred yards to the 
beginning of a stretch of firm road, then go back 
for the others, one at a time. Elsewhere on the 
roads, no gang of men being available, two or 
three trucks that had managed to keep out of 
trouble would be pushing and pulling a loaded 
truck that had gotten into trouble. One would 
be pushing and two pulling; the engines would 
roar, the wheels would spin, and the motor-mon- 
sters would leap and tug, panting and growling 
like great trapped animals ; and finally, clamping 



"The Conquering of the Highroad" 205 

their teeth on something solid at last, slowly, 
painfully drag their loins up — up — and out. 

"All right — let's go!" and the men who "fight 
the trucks" would be off down the road, slipping 
and sliding drunkenly, fighting forward every 
inch of the way, maybe for two hundred yards 
without a halt. 
*^* In the selection of divisions to form the Army 
of Occupation the element of reward for extraor- 
dinary services in the war did figure, and the 
men knew it. That is why they were so cheer- 
ful as they toiled up the red-muck hills, snaking 
trucks out of ditches, urging tired horses to an- 
other long pull, walking with feet that weighed 
many times more than ordinary feet, for the shoes 
of the infantry gathered the German mud and 
grew in size and tonnage like the snowball roll- 
ing down the hill. And that, in fact, is why 
they groused about it when they settled down 
for an evening or two in a new German village 
a little nearer the river Rhine; for no soldier's 
vacation was complete unless he could sit around 
of an evening with some of his buddies and swap 
growls and kicks. 



206 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

They had wide-eyed, open-mouthed galleries 
now in the kitchens of Germany. Birresborn, a 
town about as big as Speicher, was a two-night 
stand, and every man who could possibly do it 
had hunted himself up a billet in some German 
house. By four o'clock the first afternoon the 
casual officers' mess was established in the vil- 
lage Gasthaus, a phonograph was going and a 
group of officers had discovered that there was 
exactly one-half of a keg of beer left in the vil- 
lage, and had chipped in and bought it — "just 
so we'd have some on hand," one of them said. 
By five o'clock they were sitting around a table 
beginning the evening's grouse, with two amazed 
German women watching them from behind the 
bar, and a sepia-toned picture of Wilhelm II 
looking down at them from the wall. That night 
at supper the captain-photographer in the 
Signal Battalion surveyed the officers of the 
42nd Division, seated up and down two long 
tables shoveling in food and dealing out conver- 
sation, while the Kaiser, as he looked in the 
grand old days before the ground rose up and 
hit him, haughtily contemplated the scene; and 



"The Conquering of the Highroad" 207 

he opined, this captain photographer did, that 
this certainly would make a fine flashlight for 
the Rainbow Division's pictorial record. 

But he never took it. He told me instead how 
every negative of the division's march through 
France and Belgium had been ruined in Luxem- 
burg when a bunch of little Luxemburg children, 
wondering whether the nice leather case wasn't 
full of that precious thing, chocolate, had opened 
it, pulled out the plates and exposed every one 
to the light. 

But coming into Germany he had gotten some 
good stuff. Spinning along in his Ford truck 
he sat on the front seat and the sergeant hung 
his legs over the tailgate, and between them both 
they licked the German scenery-platter clean. 
That morning they caught a group of Germans 
working on two dead horses. They had just 
skinned the horses and the photographer had 
"shot" the whole scene — one German rolling up 
the skins and putting them in a wheelbarrow; 
two others cutting steaks and piling them into 
another wheelbarrow, and the rest looking on 
hungrily. 



208 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Leather would come from the skins probably 
and the steaks would trot their last heat from the 
frying pan to several German dining-room 
tables. 

Knowing how hard up Germany is for leather 
everybody was surprised to hear in Birresborn 
the story about Major Bertram's boots. Major 
Bertram was intelligence officer of the 42nd, 
but as the work of an intelligence officer in 
an Army of Occupation consists principally 
of repeating every day "There are no new iden- 
tifications in the army," and "There are no new 
enemy movements to report," Major Bertram 
had been handling Major Bob Gill's job while 
the latter was in the hospital. Major Gill's job 
was the job of moving the division — some job. 

At noon Major Bertram had started for Bir- 
resborn. Just before he left Speicher the Major 
remarked : "Let's run back to Welschbillig first. 
My orderly left my best Cordovan boots back 
there. I've been saving them for the big entry 
into Coblenz." 

His companions in the big limousine remarked 
that it was too bad the orderly had forgotten 



''The Conquering of the Highroad" 209 

about them, and they certainly hoped he'd find 
them, but secretly they didn't think he would, 
and he probably didn't think so either. A 
leather-hungry German had probably pounced 
upon them, and, by some miraculous application 
of Kultur, had turned them into two hundred 
pairs of shoes worth two hundred and fifty marks 
a pair. 

Also there was fresh in Lieutenant Poteet's 
mind the strange little story he had heard that 
morning from his orderly. It didn't tend to 
make him feel hopeful for the major's boots. I 
will tell that story presently. 

As for Major Bertram he went straight to his 
Welschbillig billet, was in the house about three 
minutes, and came out grinning all over and tri- 
umphantly carrying the boots. 

"The old fellow had locked them in his safe 
so that nobody would steal them," he laughed. 
"Pretty lucky, eh?" 

"Well, there's one honest German," said Lieu- 
tenant Poteet. 

Looking at it from that angle, Germany so 
far as one could figure it, had a batting average 



210 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

in the Honesty League of about .001. If the 
following strange story had had a different end- 
ing it might have been .002. And this is the 
story of Lieutenant Poteet's orderly. 

The orderly had fixed up the lieutenant's cot 
in the lieutenant's room and had fixed his own 
blankets on it, preparatory to sleeping there, 
while the lieutenant slept in the bed. Then the 
orderly went down to the Welschbillig school- 
house to sit around the stove for a while with a 
bunch of other Kansas men. 

When he came back, Lieutenant Poteet was 
in bed, but not asleep. 

"You should have been here," he told the boy. 
"The old man who owns this place was up here 
fraternizin'. He came up about an hour ago and 
went fumbling around in that wardrobe. He 
came out with his hands full of cakes shaped like 
birds and animals and gave me one. 

"From what I could understand tomorrow is 
St. Nicholas Day here in Germany — December 
6 — and the Weinachtsman is supposed to leave 
these little cakes for the children. It's like our 
Christmas. He gave me this cake shaped like a 



"The Conquering of the Highroad?' 211 

rabbit as a St. Nicholas present. I wanted to 
keep it as a souvenir, but the old man insisted on 
my eating it right away. It was pretty good." 

The orderly was properly sorry he hadn't been 
around when this little bit of Christmas cheer was 
passing. There would be little enough Christ- 
mas over here anyway. The Germans had al- 
ways specialized in St. Nicholas, too. They 
were the originators of Santa Claus — started him 
out as a round, fat, white-whiskered, apple- 
cheeked, delightful old man who was always 
laughing and giving away presents around the 
snow-and-holly time. He was wishing he had 
had one of these cakes — springling, Poteet had 
said the old German called them — when he went 
to sleep. 

In the morning he sat on the edge of his cot to 
dress and reached for his socks, which he had laid 
on the table that stood against the wall. Night 
before the light of the single candle had been 
dim and flickering and he hadn't noticed the table 
much. He noticed it now, though. It was full 
of little plaster images of saints and there was 



212 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

a vase of artificial roses on it and a vase of some 
dried grasses and a picture of a little girl. 

By the picture lay something that made the or- 
derly start and rub his eyes. It was a "spring- 
ling" — a St. Nicholas Day cake — a Christmas 
present. The old man had put it there for him ! 
Well, that was pretty white for an old Boche. 

The cake was shaped on the rough, general 
lines of a rooster. The orderly bit a piece out 
of it. It was pretty good. He decided to keep 
the rest and take it home. That would be a 
great souvenir to take home — a real German St. 
Nicholas cake, left by old Santa Claus himself 
in his own country, which had just been licked 
by the Rainbow Division, et al. So he put it 
in his pocket, dressed hurriedly, dashed down- 
stairs to breakfast in the old German's kitchen, 
where he and some other orderlies had arranged 
for mess in Welschbillig, and went about the 
work of getting himself and his lieutenant ready 
to move on to Speicher. 

It was about nine o'clock in the morning and 
he was halfway there, riding on a baggage truck, 
when a startling thought occurred to him. He 



"The Conquering of the Highroad" 213 

had felt the cake in his pocket and his mind had 
gone back over the train of events that led to its 
being there. He recalled the little table, and 
everything about it stood out sharply in his mem- 
ory. In memory it had a strange look that he 
hadn't noticed in the hurry of the morning. 
There was something sacred about it. Those 
plaster images — one of them was of the Saviour, 
he remembered now, and there had been a cruci- 
fix, too, and they had all been arranged in some 
order. 

And that picture; the cake had been lying 
right in front of it. It was a picture of a little 
girl dressed all in white, with a wreath around her 
hair. Her first communion dress, probably. 
She must have been the old man's little girl. 

Just there, apparently, this startling thought 
hit him between the eyes. Why, that table was 
a family altar, of course ! That cake hadn't been 
put there for him, the old man hadn't even known 
he was going to stay in the room. He had put 
the cake there for his little girl. The little girl 
had died. They probably put the same cake 
there every year on St. Nicholas' Eve. 



214 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Now, this Kansas boy was like every other 
soldier in the American Army of Occupation. 
He had been in the hardest fights in the war. 
He hadn't been an orderly very long, he had been 
a fighting, hard-boiled, rough-neck doughboy who 
knew the German as an enemy, for he had seen 
the German trying to kill him and actually kill- 
ing some of his buddies. Like every other 
American soldier, he had approached the Ger- 
man border with some hauteur and contempt, 
ready at the flicker of an eyelash to slug to his 
knees the first German who tried to get gay. 
And, like every other American, he had been 
patting the dirty little German kids' heads and 
smiling at the old women, and not being too 
coldly distant toward the village girls, and being 
more paternal than contemptuous toward the 
men, ever since he had gotten into Germany. 

So he didn't let this new St. Nicholas Day de- 
velopment worry him long, but hopped off the 
truck, caught one going back to Welschbillig, 
sneaked into the old house and up the stairs, and 
with his overseas cap in his hand, placed the 
"springling" back on the table in front of the 



"The Conquering of the Highroad" 215 

picture of the little girl who was undoubtedly 
dead — the "springling" with the piece he had bit- 
ten out of it. Then he went out to catch another 
truck for Speicher, feeling deeply at peace with 
everything and everybody. The poor old man's 
Christmas offering to his little daughter would 
not go astray now. These Germans might be 
enemies, but the war was over now, and the Ger- 
mans would listen to American doctrine more 
earnestly if they had a high opinion of the hon- 
esty of American soldiers. Well, he'd done his 
part. 

He happened to catch the truck on which the 
boy who had cooked for their mess down in the 
German kitchen, was going to Speicher. It was 
a nice little mess — a congenial bunch of enlisted 
men with one of them acting as cook and draw- 
ing all the rations, and with nobody butting in. 

"What d'ye think?" said the cook, taking one 
of the orderly's cigarettes. "Y'know that old 
rat-eyed bird back there where we ate? Well 
y'know we had three whole cans of bacon last 
night. This old bird stole the other two. Sure 
as you're born! Got in the truck after they 



216 The Story of the Eainbow Division 

loaded everything in, and when I looked around 
just a few minutes ago, there was only one left. 
An' the ole woman was cookin' bacon on the stove 
this mornin', too. For two cents, I'd go back 
there and crown him with a .45 but what's the 
use. You couldn't prove it on him, but he stole 
it, all right." 

The Kansas boy was silent for a long while, 
and it wasn't until the cook had forgotten all 
about it that he said, 

"Why didn't you tell me that sooner, cookie? 
I'd like to go back an' crown him myself." 

" 'S too late now," said the cook. 

"Yes," said the Kansas boy, " 's too late." 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE BOCHE UNMASKED 

Around the kitchen stoves of the formerly 
Imperial Germany the greatest of indoor sports 
for the Rainbow Division these days was "cuss- 
ing" the Kaiser. 

"Well, what d'ye think o' the Kaiser now?" 
the doughboys would drawl, by way of starting 
the conversation, as they hitched up the kitchen 
chairs of an evening and offered the cigarettes 
to Mein Herr and Meine Frau and all the little 
"Hairs" and "frows" who were numerous even 
as the sands of the sea, and that is no joke. One 
could think long and deeply for some way to tell 
briefly what a great number of little children 
there were in Germany, but it would be all a 
waste of time, because just as soon as one decided 
upon a nice, high-sounding set of words, along 
would come new, incredible droves of children, 

217 



218 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

and the nice words would not be fit to describe 
the size of the seventh grade's attendance on the 
morning of circus day. 

Mein Herr, listening keenly to the doughboy, 
because he wanted to be friendly, would catch 
the word "Kaiser." The rest of the sentence 
wouldn't mean anything to him at all, but that 
word "Kaiser" would be enough of a cue. There 
was the place for the entering wedge. 

There was the chance to drive home the big 
idea — the biggest idea that that part of Germany 
seemed to have just then. 

"Ach!" snarled Mein Herr. "Ach! Kaiser 
Kaput! Finish Kaiser! Kaput!" 

"Well, well!" said the doughboy, somewhat 
surprised and somewhat pleased, too, for this at- 
titude of the owner of his billet upon the subject 
of the Kaiser, sort of put a common understand- 
ing between him and the old man. "Why, 
maybe he'll come across with some eggs for lunch 
or dinner tonight, and maybe the old woman will 
trot out some honey !" 

So they proceeded with words — stilted mono- 
syllabic words of mingled English and German, 



The Boche Unmasked 219, 

with now and then, on the part of the doughboy, 
a little of the hard- won French that was too good 
to go entirely to waste — to vie with each other 
at drawing and quartering the Kaiser. 

The hatred of the American soldier for the 
things the Kaiser represents — or represented — 
needs no introduction, but this hatred on the part 
of the German people in the country through 
which the American army was passing probably 
does need an introduction. It was then so new 
that the German people had not had time yet to 
take down the pictures of the Kaiser and Hin- 
denburg and LudendorfF and Bismarck and the 
Crown Prince, which hung over their heads on 
the kitchen and dining-room walls even as they 
hailed curses and "kaputs." They still deco- 
rated their walls with likenesses of the heroes they 
professed to hate. 

On this, the second day of Rainbow Division 
Headquarters' stay in Birresborn, I discovered 
in my room a picture of the head of the house- 
hold. Unless you looked at it very closely you 
could not tell that the picture represented the 
man you had seen downstairs. It had been taken 



220 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

in Trier four years ago, when the old gentleman, 
attired in his best, with a black bow tie and about 
three inches of white cuff showing at his wrists, 
looked like the president of the city council or 
the superintendent of the Sunday School. 

But Sunday morning, when he was getting 
ready to go to church with his wife and daugh- 
ters, he looked like an old down-and-outer. His 
threadbare, wrinkled coat, of no particular shade, 
was buttoned high around his throat to cover the 
lack of white collar. There were fringes around 
his wrists instead of cuffs, and his face was old 
and seamed, and covered with a stubble of beard. 
He was only four years older; he had not taken 
to drink (in fact, as the village brewer, he had 
begun producing mineral water instead of beer 
when times grew hard), and he was still a re- 
spected figure in the community. But he had 
changed entirely in appearance, and he had 
changed in ideals and disposition. 

He hated everything. He hated the Kaiser 
and drew his finger suggestively across his throat 
whenever anybody mentioned the word "Kaiser." 
He hated the "Berlin crowd" ; he hated Hinden- 



The Boche Unmasked 221 

burg and LudendorfF and the Crown Prince. 
He hated Von Tirpitz. 

And he hated also the Socialists and citizens 
who were handling the Government of Germany 
in the Kaiser's absence, and just to round out the 
schedule, he professed a snippish attitude toward 
the United States and President Wilson. 

Gold, gold, gold, started the war, he would 
growl, rubbing his thumbs and ringers together. 
All the gang in Berlin wanted was more gold, so 
they started the war — or rather Russia started it. 

He leaned against the door- jamb, looking into 
his dining-room, where six Division Headquar- 
ters sergeants sat around the table smoking after 
mess. The sergeant in charge of couriers who 
was translating what the old man said, wanted 
to know whether the United States had come into 
the war for gold. 

The German exploded a forcible "Yah!" and 
uttered the names of "Rockefeller" and "Mor- 
gan." 

"He says," translated the courier-sergeant, 
"that Morgan and Rockefeller got the United 



222 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

States into the war." The sergeants laughed 
long and loud. 

"Ask him if Morgan and Rockefeller sent the 
submarines out to sink American ships and 
drown American citizens," asked Sergeant 
"Slim" Wilson. The courier-sergeant asked 
him. The face of the head of the house assumed 
a tigerish grin as he answered. 

"He says the submarines would have won the 
war if they let Von Tirpitz alone," declared the 
interpreter. 

Apparently he hadn't fully understood the 
question, but, unwittingly, he was making him- 
self clear on everything. He v/as giving these 
American soldiers a picture of the middle-class 
citizenry of Germany as it looked with the war 
over and lost. 

This representative middle-class German 
hated the old German Government for starting 
the war because it hadn't won the war. He 
hated the United States because the United 
States had defeated Germany. He hated Von 
Tirpitz because he had started the submarine war 
and hadn't finished it. 



The Boche Unmasked 223 

We wondered, from all this, why he hated the 
new government which was repudiating all the 
things for which the old war-losing government 
had stood. 

"He says," the courier-sergeant translated, 
"that the new government wants to take his chil- 
dren out of school and put them to work, and he 
says he ain't going to stand for it." 

We had gathered that he was talking about 
something that infuriated him for his expression 
was ferocious and as he talked he struck an open 
palm with a clenched fist. 

The old government had sapped him of his 
substance to make war. The new government 
wanted to sacrifice the future of his children to 
the present reconstruction needs of the nation. 
He and his family were middle-class folk, and 
the end of the war had caught them between an 
upper and a nether millstone, because his only 
concern under whatever government he lived, 
had been for the selfish welfare of himself and 
his family. If imperialism and victorious war- 
fare could bring him and them more comforts, 
well and good. But imperialism had failed him 



224 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

and now its substitutes were failing him, so damn 
them — all of them, and everything that was mak- 
ing him a cheap pawn. 

The village brewer was working himself into 
something of a rage under the questioning of 
the six sergeants and their patronizing smiles at 
his answers, so they stopped suddenly. "He'll 
begin throwing plates around in a minute," Ser- 
geant-Major Walter Davis said. 

He seemed to regret his outburst because later 
in the evening he came upstairs and opened two 
bottles of his own Birresborn mineral water and 
sat down and told us that usually during that sea- 
son the snow was about four feet deep, and that 
the beer crop in Germany had been a failure for 
the past two years. 

It appeared now, though, that the general dis- 
position of the German was changing every- 
where, at least everywhere the Rainbow Divi- 
sion was staying. At first he had sneaked 
around and regarded Americans from the cor- 
ners of his eyes. Then he had stood still and 
looked at them frankly and openly, and respect- 



The Boche Unmasked 225 

fully touched his hat when they glanced in his 
direction. 

Now that he was reassured — certain that the 
American Army intended to do none of the things 
he had been taught to believe Americans did to 
those they conquered — he was showing that his 
humility was a mask, and the "old Boche" in him 
was reappearing. The Germans had been given 
the inch and they were trying to get away with 
the mile. 

It seems that the German people were figuring 
that the simple-hearted Americans didn't real- 
ize that they were actually conquerors and en- 
titled to run things to suit themselves. In obedi- 
ence to regulations, the American troops (they 
figured) would probably try to requisition wood 
and forage and some other things they needed, 
but had not word arrived from down the road 
that the Americans weren't particular about 
those things and that one needn't fear the con- 
sequences of turning them down? Sure it had! 

So in the village of Schlied twenty discharged 
German soldiers got together on the day the 
117th ammunition train from Kansas pulled in 



226 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

and decided to put something over. They sent 
a spokesman to Major Frank, the C. O., to in- 
form him that his soldiers could not requisition 
wood and forage from the citizens of Schlied. 
The spokesman was very polite about it, and he 
was very sorry, but the Americans had no right 
to this forage and wood, and they, the citizens of 
Schlied, Germany — ex-soldiers of the all-highest 
— didn't propose to give it to them. 

In a few well-chosen words — polite, but to the 
point — Major Frank told the spokesman to get 
to hell out of his office. 

He ordered the Burgomaster of Schlied to ap- 
pear before him instantly. The Burgomaster 
appeared and Major Frank hitched his chair up 
to a table, picked out a spot of its top that looked 
as though it would stand heavy pounding and 
launched into a rollicking old chantey with bass- 
drum accompaniment. 

"Your village has insulted the American 
Army. It has sent a discharged soldier of the 
German Army to tell me that it can't have things 
or do things. 

"First of all, neither you nor any other Ger- 



The Boche Unmasked 227 

man in this whole acreage of limburger can tell 
me what American troops can have or can't have. 

"Second, no civilians can come in here and talk 
to me at all. And if I want to say anything to 
this gang here I'll say it through yon, and I'll 
send for you when I want you. 

"Third, no more conferences of prominent cit- 
izens here. If I hear of more than ten people in 
Schlied gathering together in one place, I'll send 
armed guards to scatter 'em. 

"And lastly: I don't expect to ask your peo- 
ple to furnish my men any meat or bread, or any 
food at all. The American Army is able to feed 
itself. But if I do want meat or bread or eggs 
or butter, you'll furnish it, do you understand? 
And whenever I want hay, hay I'll have ! When- 
ever I want wood, wood I'll have! You'll get 
it and bring it where I tell you to, and you'll get 
a receipt for it, and that'll be the end of it until 
I want some more! Now, get out of here!" 

And extravagant rumor-hounds do say that 
somebody started a movement in Schlied to make 
the Ammunition Train Major the first Presi- 
dent of Germany. 



CHAPTER XV 



CASTLES ON THE RHINE 



On the banks of the Rhine the Rainbow Divi- 
sion halted on the fifteenth of December. There, 
at its goal, it stood as it had stood so many months 
before on the "Valley Forge Hike" through the 
snow from Vaucouleurs to Rolampont — with its 
bare feet sticking out of its shoes. 

For the Rainbow had walked all the way, from 
the front line in France to the heart of Germany. 
The food it needed had managed to follow it. 
Its wagons and trucks, though the mud had 
clutched desperately at the wheels, had managed 
to keep up. But the shoes it wore when the 
march ended were the same shoes it had worn 
when the march began. French railroads had 
not been able to handle food for the American 
Army of Occupation and shoes as well. 

So all the brave finery with which the Rainbow 

228 



Castles on the Rhine 229 

had started out from Brandeville back in No- 
vember was gone now. Redeemed France and 
Belgium had seen some of it and had been prop- 
erly impressed. But Germany, whose own sol- 
diers were to have marched into Paris glittering 
with new brass and silver and patent-leather, saw 
in the newly arrived American Army of Occu- 
pation (at least in the Rainbow part of it), a 
band of men who were almost ragamuffins. 

The ragamuffins brought up the tail end of the 
divisional column. Commanded by officers who 
had dropped out along the way to pick up the 
men whose marching shoes had broken down un- 
der them, they made a sort of auxiliary regiment. 

And almost immediately they went from raga- 
muffinism to a state of baronial opulence. They 
took up a new life in castles on the Rhine. 

The infantry regiments and machine-gun out- 
fits were in towns on the very bank of the river. 
The artillerymen were in towns from ten to 
twenty kilometers west of the river. Division 
Headquarters was in Ahrweiler, about twenty 
kilometers from the stream. Coblenz was about 
thirty kilometers to the south; Cologne, where 



230 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

the British were, about the same distance to the 
north. 

Lordly mountains with ancient legends fairly- 
oozing out of the vapors that curled around their 
crests, covered the earth. Ruined castles that 
seemed as old as the hills themselves etched 
ragged-edged blotches against the sky-line. 
Nearer at hand were modern chateaus — rich- 
looking summer homes surrounded by profes- 
sionally tended gardens. On the inlaid wood 
and marble floors of these the men of the Hain- 
bow dumped their duffle-bags, packs and blan- 
ket-rolls and made themselves at home. 

Chaplain Duffy of the old 69th New York 
took over a suite in one of these mansions and 
established himself in quarters like those of an 
oil magnate. Major Winn, commander of the 
Georgia Machine-gun Battalion, went bunking 
in the home of an Italian count who had married 
some years ago a wealthy American woman with 
a home and property in Germany. Sergeant 
Hank Gowdy, erstwhile idol of baseball fandom, 
established himself in a summer palace of glass. 

In the town of Neuenahr the Minnesota Field 



Castles on the Rhine 231 

Artillery took up the existence of a regiment of 
plethorically rich invalids, occupying every hotel 
in the place and commandeering the famous sul- 
phur baths to which wealthy folk with gout and 
plain rheumatism had journeyed for years and 
years. 

And there, along the River Rhine, the Rain- 
bow Division stayed for nearly four months. It 
floated up and down the stream on excursion 
boats, while "bally-hoo men" in Y. M. C. A. uni- 
forms with Baedeker's Guides in their hands 
pointed out this place as the spot where the 
Lorelei had inaugurated the first Roche cam- 
paign of frightfulness, and that place as the 
hang-out of the Bishop of Bingen, and this as the 
Fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, and so on. 

And the doughboys drank it all in and shivered 
in the biting winter winds that swept down the 
river, and growled, "Is this what we won the war 
for?" and wondered, "When do we eat?" For 
that is the way of the doughboy. 

There (as I said before), along the River 
Rhine, we will end the story of the Rainbow Di- 
vision, leaving it snimng critically at the glories 



232 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

of the German scenery and "grousing" about 
everything in the world, with nothing but good- 
natured ill-temper over everything in the uni- 
verse except the vision of home. 

For the vision of home was always a glorious 
thing to the Rainbow Division — as glorious a 
thing as the vision to the nation that sent them of 
the Rainbow's career on the fields of France. 
And though home becomes more than a vision 
to the Rainbow, the Rainbow will never be more 
than a vision to home. It paraded our streets 
and the home-folk saw it marching, but they 
never saw it fighting and never can. Of that 
there is nothing left for the home-folk but poor, 
halting stories — like those recounted here. 



THE END 



APPENDIX I 

FOSTER OF RAINBOW DIVISION OFFICERS AT 
CAMP MILLS, IN OCTOBER, 1917 

PERSONNEL OF RAINBOW DIVISION STAFF 

Major General William A. Mann .. Division Commander. 

Captain John B. Coulter Aide-de-Camp. 

Colonel Douglas MacArthur Chief of Staff. 

Major Samuel R. Gleaves Asst. to C. of S. 

Major William N. Hughes, Jr. Asst. to C. of S. 

Major Francis W. Ralston Division Adjutant. 

Major Marion S. Battle Asst. Div. Adjutant. 

Lieut. Col. John L. DeWitt Division Quartermaster. 

Lieut. Col. George F. Baltzell Division Inspector. 

Lieut. Col. Blanton Winship Judge Advocate. 

Lieut. Col. J. W. Grissinger Division Surgeon. 

Major James W. Frew Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 

Major David S. Fairchild Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 

Major James K. Crain Division Ordnance Officer. 

Lieut. Col. Hanson B. Black Division Signal Officer. 

Colonel William C. Brown Cavalry, Attached. 

Captain Oscar W. Underwood .... Cavalry, Attached. 

Major George F. Graham Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. 

Major Allen Potts Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. 

Captain Marshall F. Sharp Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. 

Captain George W. McLean Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. 

2nd Lieut. James S. Harvey Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. 

2nd Lieut. Fred. O. Klackering Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. 

2nd Lieut. John P. Clark Asst. to Div. Quartermaster. 

Captain Edw. DuBois Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 

Captain Thomas A. Burchman Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 

1st Lieut. M. P. Lane Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 

233 



234 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

1st Lieut. William F. Satchell Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 

1st Lieut. R. MeK. McDowell Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 

1st Lieut. G. C. Van Sickle Asst. to Div. Surgeon. 

1st Lieut. D. J. Downey Div. Statistical Section. 

2nd Lieut. G. B. Norton Div. Statistical Section. 

2nd Lieut. Don C. Sims Div. Statistical Section. 

1st Lieut. W. S. Murray Interpreter. 

2nd Lieut. F. R. Wulsin Interpreter. 

HEADQUARTERS TROOP 

(1st Separate Troop, Louisiana Cavalry) 
Captain Louis J. Taylor Commanding Officer. 

149th machine gust battalion" 
(Cos. I, K, L and M, Ijth Pennsylvania Infantry) 
Major Quintin O. Reitzell Commanding Officer. 

BRIGADE AND REGIMENTAL OFFICERS OF 83rd IN- 
FANTRY BRIGADE ON OCTOBER 12, 1917 

Brigadier General Michael J. Lenihan. . Brigade Commander. 

Major Wylie T. Conway Brigade Adjutant. 

1st Lieut. Howard Grose 

1st Lieut. Leon W. Miesse 

2nd Lieut. Roy H. Boberg 

165th infantry 

(69th New York Infantry) 

Colonel Charles Hine Regimental Commander. 

Lieut. Col. Latham R. Reed 

Major Timothy J. Moynahan C. O. 1st Battalion. 

Major William B. Stacom C. O. 2nd Battalion. 

Major William J. Donovan C. O. 3rd Battalion. 

1st Lieut. Francis P. Duffy Chaplain. 

Maj or George J. Lawrence Regimental Surgeon. 



Appendix I 235 

166th infantry 

(4th Ohio Infantry) 

Colonel Benson W. Hough Regimental Commander. 

Lieut. Col. George Florence 

Captain Charles C. Gusman Regimental Adjutant. 

Major Roll G. Allen C. O. 1st Battalion. 

Major Frank D. Henderson C. O. 2nd Battalion. 

Major Louis D. Houser C. O. 3rd Battalion. 

1st Lieut. J. J. Halliday Chaplain. 

Captain Fred K. Kislig Regimental Surgeon. 

150th machine gun battalion 
(Cos. A, B, Cj 2nd Wisconsin Infantry) 
Major William B. Hall Commanding Officer. 

BRIGADE AND REGIMENTAL OFFICERS OF 84th IN- 
FANTRY BRIGADE ON OCTOBER 12, 1917 

Brigadier General Robert A. Brown . . Brigade Commander. 

Major S. M. Rumbough Brigade Adjutant. 

2nd Lieut. Geo. B. Mourning Aide-de-Camp. 

2nd Lieut. David W. Oyler Aide-de-Camp. 

167th infantry 

(4th Alabama Infantry) 

Colonel William P. Screws Regimental Commander. 

Lieut. Col. Walter E. Bare 

Major Hartley A. Moon C. O. 1st Battalion. 

Major Dallas B. Smith C. O. 2nd Battalion. 

Major John W. Carroll C. O. 3rd Battalion. 

Captain Robert Joerg Regimental Adjutant. 

Major John W. Watts Regimental Surgeon. 



236 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

168th infantry 

(3rd Iowa Infantry) 

Colonel Ernest R. Bennett Regimental Commander. 

Lieut. Col. Matthew A. Tinley 

Major Guy S. Brewer C. O. 1st Battalion. 

Major Claude M. Stanley C. O. 2nd Battalion. 

Major Emery C. Worthington C. O. 3rd Battalion. 

Captain Paul I. VanOrder Regimental Adjutant. 

Winfred E. Robb Chaplain. 

Major Wilbur S. Conkling Regimental Surgeon. 

151st machine gun battalion 
(Cos. B, C and F, 2nd Georgia Infantry) 
Major Cooper D. Winn Commanding Officer. 

BRIGADE AND REGIMENTAL OFFICERS OF 67th FIELD 
ARTILLERY BRIGADE ON OCTOBER 12, 1917 

Brigadier Gen. Charles P. Summerall . . Brigade Commander. 

Captain Max E. Payne Attached. 

Captain H. R. Denton Attached. 

Captain James F. Burns Attached. 

1st Lieut. James A. Holt Attached. 

1st Lieut. Stephen M. Foster Attached. 

2nd Lieut. L. P. Jerrard Attached. 

2nd Lieut. Rayman K. Aitken Attached. 

2nd Lieut. A. B. Butler Attached. 

2nd Lieut. De Lano Andrews Attached. 

149th field artillery 

(1st Illinois Field Artillery) 

Colonel Henry J. Reilly Regimental Commander. 

Lieut. Colonel Ashbel V. Smith 

Major Noble B. Judah, Jr C. O. 1st Battalion. 

Maj or Curtis G. Redden C. O. 2nd Battalion. 



Appendix I 237 

Captain Jacob McG. Dickinson 

Captain Hugh R. Montgomery 

Captain Irving Odell 

Major Joseph E. Dowan Regimental Surgeon. 

150th field artillery, HEAW 

(1st Indiana Field Artillery) 

Colonel Robert H. Tyndall Regimental Commander. 

Lieut. Colonel Thomas S. Wilson 

Major Guy A. Wainwright C. O. 1st Battalion. 

Major Solon J. Carter C. O. 2nd Battalion. 

Major Marlin A. Prather C. O. 3rd Battalion. 

Captain Daniel I. Glossbrenner Regimental Adjutant. 

Major Frank C. Robinson Regimental Surgeon. 

151ST FIELD ARTILLERY 

(1st Minnesota Field Artillery) 

Colonel George E. Leach Regimental Commander. 

Lieut. Colonel William H. Donahue 

Major John F. McDonald C. O. 1st Battalion. 

Major Charles A. Green C. O. 2nd Battalion. 

Captain Lewis C. Coleman 

Captain Erwin H. Sherman 

1st Lieut. William J. Harrington Chaplain. 

117th trench mortar battery 
(Cos. S and 4, Maryland Coast Artillery Corps) 
Captain Robert J. Gill Commanding Officer. 

117th engineer regiment 

(1st Bn., 1st Sep. Bn. S. C. Engineers) 
(2nd Bn., 1st Sep. Bn. Calif. Engineers) 

Colonel William Kelly Regimental Commander. 

Lieut. Colonel Harold S. Hetrick 

Major J. M. Johnson C. O. 1st Battalion. 



238 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Major Jay A. Given C. O. 2nd Battalion. 

Captain Elihu Church Regimental Adjutant. 

Lieut. Colonel Harold S. Hetrick 

Captain Albert Pike 



117th engineer train 
(North Carolina) 
Captain Richard D. Clowe Commanding Officer. 

117th ammunition train 

(Kansas) 

Lieut. Col. Frank L. Travis Train Commander. 

Captain William K. Herndon Adjutant. 

Major George J. Frank C. O. Horsed Section. 

Major Albert H. Herman C. O. Motor Section. 

117th supply train 

(Texas) 

Major Albert E. Devine Train Commander. 

1st Lieut. William E. Talbot Adjutant. 

117th field battalion signal corps 

Major Ruby D. Garrett Battalion Commander. 

1st Lieut. Glenn O. Brown Adjutant. 

117th train headquarters and military polich 
(Virginia Coast Artillery Corps) 
Major R. E. Shannon Commanding Officer. 

117th sanitary train 
Captain Dunning S. Wilson .....Director of Ambulances- 



Appendix I 239 



165th ambulance company 
(1st Ambulance Company, New Jersey) 
Captain Peter P. Rafferty Commanding Officer. 

166th ambulance company 
(1st Ambulance Company, Tennessee) 
Captain Percy A. Perkins Commanding Officer. 

167th ambulance company 
(1st Ambulance Company, Oklahoma) 
Captain Hector G. Lareau Commanding Officer. 

168th ambulance company 
(1st Ambulance Company, Michigan) 
Captain Robert J. Baskerville Commanding Officer. 

FIELD HOSPITAL SECTION 
165th field hospital 
(1st Field Hospital, Dist. of Columbia) 
Major Herbert J. Bryson Commanding Officer. 

166th field hospital 
(1st Field Hospital, Nebraska) 
Major John F. Spealman Commanding Officer. 

167th field hospital 
(1st Field Hospital, Oregon) 
Major James P. Graham Commanding Officer. 



240 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

168th field hospital 
(1st Field Hospital, Colorado) 
Major Edward W. Lazell Commanding Officer. 



APPENDIX II 

ROSTER OF RAINBOW DIVISION OFFICERS 
NOVEMBER 11, 1918 

PERSONNEL OF RAINBOW DIVISION STAFF 

Major General Charles T. Menoher. . . Division Commander 

1st Lieut. F. W. Wulsin Aide de Camp 

Colonel William N. Hughes, Jr. ... Chief of Staff 

Major Robert J. Gill A. C. of S., G-l 

1st Lieut. Marcus L. Poteet Asst. to A. C. of S., G-l 

Lieut. Col. Noble B. Judah A. C. of S., G-2 

Major E. H. Bertram Asst. to A. C. of S., G-2 

Captain John A. Greene Asst. to A. C. of S., G-2 

Lieut. Col. Grayson H. P. Murphy... A. C. of S., G-3 

Captain Roy S. Gault Asst. to A. C. of S., G-3 

1st Lieut. S. Z. Orgle Asst. to A. C. of S., G-3 

1st Lieut. Thurlow Brewer Asst. to A. C. of S., G-3 

1st Lieut. P. E. Sunstrom Asst. to A. C. of 3., G-3 

Lieut. Col. Stanley M. Rumbough.... Division Adjutant 

Major James E. Thomas Act. Division Adjutant 

Captain Dennis J. Downey Statistical Officer 

1st Lieut. William Bradford Asst. to Statistical Officer 

1st Lieut. Walter J. Curley Asst. to Statistical Officer 

Major Albert D. Fetterman Division Inspector 

Lieut. Col. Hugh W. Ogden Judge Advocate 

Lieut. Col. George F. Graham Division Quartermaster 

Major Marshall F. Sharp Asst. to Quartermaster 

Captain C. A. Cordingly Asst. to Quartermaster 



Appendix II 241 

Captain R. M. Overstreet Asst. to Quartermaster 

Captain Paul W. Fechtman Asst. to Quartermaster 

Captain Edward McMurry Asst. to Quartermaster 

1st Lieut. John P. Clark Asst. to Quartermaster 

1st Lieut. Fred. O. Klakring Asst. to Quartermaster 

1st Lieut. George Brown Asst. to Quartermaster 

2nd Lieut. Henry R. Black Asst. to Quartermaster 

Lieut. Col. David S. Fairchild Division Surgeon 

Captain A. J. Campbell Asst. to Division Surgeon 

Major Angus Mclvor Asst. to Division Surgeon 

Ma j or Aquila Mitchell Division Veterinarian 

Captain R. A. Mead Remount Officer 

Captain Lewis A. Platts Division Dental Surgeon 

1st Lieut. Wallace S. Murry Interpreter 

2nd Lieut. N. B. Adams Interpreter 

- Major John A. Wheeler Division Ord. Officer 

Lieut. Col. Ruby D. Garrett Division Signal Officer 

Captain Charles H. Gorrill Division Gas Officer 

Captain E. A. Wilcox .Asst. Division Gas Officer 

1st Lieut. Chester M. Neff Asst. Division Gas Officer 

Emory C. Worthington Asst. Provost Marshal 

Major Davis G. Arnold Zone Major 

Captain Morton P. Lane Asst. to Zone Major 

Captain James E. Berry Asst. to Zone Major 

Captain William Talbot Motor Transportation Officer 

2nd Lieut. F. A. Danforth Topographical Officer 



HEADQUARTERS TROOP 

Captain Lee R. Caldwell Commanding 

1st Lieut. Roy S. Miller 

149th machine gun battalion 

Major James H. Palmer Commanding 

1st Lieut. Joseph R. Cravath Adj utant 



242 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

83rd INFANTRY BRIGADE 

150th machine gttn battalion 

Captain Lothar G. Graef Commanding 

Colonel Henry J. Reilly Commanding 

Major William T. Doyle Adjutant 

165th infantry regiment 

Lieut. Col. Charles A. Dravo Commanding 

Major A. N. Anderson C. O. 1st Battalion 

Major Michael Kelly C. O. 2nd Battalion 

Major Thomas T. Reilly C. O. 3rd Battalion 

166th infantry regiment 

Colonel Benson Hough Commanding 

Lieut. Col. Bruce R. Campbell 

Major James A. Samson C. O. 1st Battalion 

Major George T. Geren C. O. 2nd Battalion 

Major Robert Haubrich C. O. 3rd Battalion 

84th INFANTRY BRIGADE 

Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur . . . Commanding 

1st Lieut. William N. Wright Aide-de-Camp 

Major Walter B. Wolf Adjutant 

151st machine gun battalion 
Major Cooper D. Winn Commanding 

167th infantry regiment 

Colonel William P. Screws Commanding 

Lieut. Col. Walter E. Bare 

Major Robert Joerg C. O. 1st Battalion 

Major Ravec Norriss C. O. 2nd Battalion 

Captain George A. Glenn C. O. 3rd Battalion 



Appendix II 243 



168th infantry regiment 

Colonel Mathew A. Tinley Commanding 

Lieut. Col. Claude M. Stanley 

Major Lloyd D. Ross C. O. 1st Battalion 

Major Oriville B. Yates C. O. 2nd Battalion 

Major Charles J. Cassey C. O. 3rd Battalion 

67th FIELD ARTILLERY BRIGADE 

Brigadier General George G. Gatley Commanding 

1st Lieut. George Milton Aide-de-Camp 

Captain James A. Holt , Adjutant 

149th field artillery regiment 

Lieut. Col. Curtis G. Redden Commanding 

Major Thomas S. Hammond C. O. 1st Battalion 

Major Thomas S. Redden C. O. 2nd Battalion 

150th field artillery regiment 

Colonel Robert H. Tyndall Commanding 

Major Stanley S. Miller C. O. 1st Battalion 

Major William Spence C. O. 2nd Battalion 

Major William Cureton C. O. 3rd Battalion 

151st field artillery regiment 

Colonel George E. Leach Commanding 

Lieut. Col. John H. McDonald. . . ^ 

Major E. P. Schugg C. O. 1st Battalion 

Major Thomas T. Handy C. O. 2nd Battalion 

11 7th trench mortar battery 
1st Lieut. J. Woodall Greene Commanding 

117th engineer regiment 

Colonel John M. Johnson CommandiD 

Lieut. Col. Wm. F. Johnson 

Major Richard T. Smith 



244 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

117th engineer train 
1st Lieut. I. L. Hines Commanding 

117th ammunition train 
Major George J. Frank Commanding 

117th supply train 
Major A. E. Devine Commanding 

117th field signal battalion 
Major Richard T. Smith Commanding 

117th train headquarters and military police 
Colonel L. J. Fleming Commanding 

117th sanitary train 
Major Wilbur S, Conkling : Commanding 



APPENDIX III 

MOVEMENTS, MATERIAL CAPTURED. CASUAL- 
TIES 

HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION 

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 

16 December, 1918. 
From: Commanding General, 42nd Division. 
To: Commander-in-Chief, American Expeditionary Forces. 

Subject: Report. 

In accordance with No. 1176, G-3, G.H.Q., American E. F., 
the following is submitted: 



Appendix III 245 

A. 

(1) Headquarters, 42nd Division, arrived in France 1st No- 
vember, 1917. 

(2) Successive locations of Division Headquarters since ar- 
rival in France are as follows: 

IN FRANCE 

Location Arrived Left 

St. Nazaire 1 Nov., 17 6 Nov., 17 

Vaucouleurs 8 Nov., 17 12 Dec, 17 

Lafauche 12 Dec, 17 26 Dec, 17 

Rolampont 26 Dec, 17 17 Feb., 18 

Luneville (Lorraine Sector) 17 Feb., 18 31 Mar., 18 

Baccarat (Lorraine Sector) 31 Mar., 18 21 June, 18 

Chatel-sur-Moselle 21 June, 18 22 June, 18 

St. Germain-la-Ville 23 June, 18 29 June, 18 

Vadenay Farm (Champagne Sec- 
tor) 29 June, 18 21 July, 18 

La Ferte-sous-Jouarre (Chateau- 
Thierry) 21 July, 18 24. July, 18 

Trugny (Chateau-Thierry Sector) "\ 

Rear Echelon, La Ferte-sous- I 24 July, 18 28 July, 18 
Jouarre I 

Beuvardes (Chateau-Thierry Sec- ] 

tor) I 28 July, 18 12 Aug., 19 

* Rear Echelon, Trugny J 

La Ferte-sous-Jouarre (Chateau- 
Thierry) 12 Aug., 18 17 Aug., 18 

Bourmont 17 Aug., 18 30 Aug., 18 

Chatenois 30 Aug., 18 5 Sep., 18 

Colombey-les-Belles 5 Sep., 18 8 Sep., 18 

Toul 8 Sep., 18 9 Sep., 18 

•Moved to Beuvardes August 4, 1918. 



246 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Location Arrived Left 

iAnsauville (St. Mihiel Sector) . . } ^ „ 

Rear Echelon, Bruley ..../ 9 Se P" 18 14 > Se P» 18 

Essey (St. Mihiel Sector) } • _ 

Rear Echelon, Ansauville J U Se P"' 18 B5 ^P" 18 

Bois de Pannes (St. Mihiel Sector) ) ' 

Rear Echelon, Bouconville . ) 25 Se P- 18 l 0ct - 18 

Benoite-Vaux-Couvent w 1 Oct., 18 4 Oct., 18 

Recicourt 4 Oct., 18 6 Oct., 18 

Bois de Montfaucon "\ 

Rear Echelon, Recicourt } 6 0ct » 18 U °*» M 

Cheppy (Argonne Sector) 11 Oct., 18 19 Oct., 18 

Camp Drachen (Argonne Sector) 1 „ 

Rear Echelon, Recicourt \ } 19 ° Ct " 18 » N ™' 18 

Champigneulles (Argonne Sector) ) 

Rear Echelon, Recicourt J 3 N ° V " 18 4 Nov " 18 

Autruche (Argonne Sector) .... 1 

Rear Echelon, Recicourt / 4 Nov " 18 6 Noy -' 18 

Grandes Armoises (Argonne Sec-) 

tor) 1 6 Nov., 18 7 Not., 18 

Rear Echelon, Recicourt , J 

Maisoncelle (Argonne Sector) . . . ) 

Rear Echelon, Redcourt ...!....} 7 N ° V " 18 10 N ° V " 18 

Buzancy 10 Nov., 18 14 Nov., 18 

Landreville 14 Nov., 18 16 Nov., 18 

Brandeville 16 Nov., 18 20 Nov., 19 

Montmedy 20 Nov., 18 21 Nov., 18 



Appendix III 



247 



IK BELGIUM 

Location Arrived 

VMon 21 Nov., 18 

Arlon 22 Nov., 18 

IN LUXEMBURG 

Mersch . . 23 Nov., 18 

Consdorf .... 2 Dec, 18 

IN GERMANY 

Welschbillig 3 Dec, 18 

Bpeicher 5 Dec, 18 

Birresborn 6 Dec, 18 

Dreis 8 Dec, 18 

Adenau 9 Dec, 18 

Ahrweiler 15 Dec, 18 



Left 
92 Nov., 18 
23 Nov., 18 



9 Dec, 18 
3 Dec, 18 



5 Dec, 18 

6 Dec, 18 

8 Dec, 18 

9 Dec, 18 
15 Dec, 18 



Place 

Luneville, Lorraine. 



Baccarat, Lorraine. 
Fme. de Vadenay, 
Champagne. 

Trugny and Beau- 
vardes, Marne. 

Ansauville, Essey 
and Bois de 
Pannes, Woevre. 

Cheppy and 00.5- 
79.5, N. E. of 
Apremont, Ar- 
gonne-Meuse. 

Autruche, Grandes 
Armoises and 
Maisoncelles, 
Meuse-Ardennes . 



Sector 

Dombasle, Luneville, St. 
Clement, Baccarat 
(Under 8th French 
Army and 7th French 
Army Corps). 

Baccarat. 

Souain and Esperance 
(2d and intermediate 
positions). 

Front of 1st U. S. A. C. 
(Ourcq). 

Ansauville, in center of 
4th U.S. A.C. Then 
Essey and Pannes. 

Left of 5th A.C. (South 
of St. Georges — Lan- 
dres-et-St. Georges — 
Cote de Chatillon). 

Left of 1st A. C. (South 
of Sedan). 



Date of Active 

Entry or Quiet 

21 Feb., 18 Quiet 



SI Mar., 18 Semi-active 
5 July, 18 Active 



25 July, 18 Active 
12 Sept., 18 Active 



Date of 
Withdrawal 

23 Mar., 13 



17 June, 18 
21 July, 18 



3 Aug., 18 
30 Sept., 18 



13 Oct., 18 Active 31 Oct., 18 



5 Nov., 18 Active 10 Nov., 18 



248 The Story of the Rainbow Division 
c. 

The 67th Field Artillery Brigade was with the division at all 
times that the division was in the front line. In addition, the 
67th Field Artillery Brigade served the following tours of duty, 
supporting front line divisions: 

With the 4th Division from August 3, 1918, to August 11, 
1918, during which time the 4th Division advanced from north 
of the Foret de Nesles to the Vesle River; 

With the 32nd Division from October 7, 1918, to October 12, 
1918, assisting in an attack on the Kriemhilde Stellung; 

With the 2nd Division from November 1, 1918, to November 

2, 1918, delivering preparation and barrage fire for the attack of 
November 1, 1918, in front of St. Georges-Landres-et-St. Georges. 

The following American artillery units have also served with the 
42nd Division during its periods in the front lines: 
Chdteau-Thierry operation 
51st Field Artillery Brigade, from July 25, 1918, to August 

3, 1918. 

St. Mihiel salient operation: 

18th Field Artillery Regiment and 10th Field Artillery Regiment, 
on September 12-13, 1918. 

Meuse-Argonne operation: 

1st Field Artillery Brigade, from October 13, 1918, to October 
31, 1918. 

D. 

PRISONERS CAPTURED BY THE RAINBOW DIVISION 

Officers 

Baccarat Sector 

Chateau-Thierry Operation (Ourcq) 

St. Mihiel Salient Operation 8 

Argonne-Meuse Operation, 13-31 October, 

1918 6 205 211 

Argonne-Meuse Operation, 5-10 Novem- 
ber, 1918 35 35 

Totals 14 1,303 1,317 



Men 


Total 


13 


13 


69 


69 


981 


989 



Appendix III 249 

E. 

MATERIAL CAPTURED BY THE RAINBOW DIVISION 

Heavy Light Trench Machine 
Art. Art. Mortars Guns Rifles 

Chateau-Thierry Opera- 
tion (Ourcq) i..i 15 155 .... 

St. Mihiel Salient Op- 
eration 9 13 6 200 .... 

Argonne-Meuse Opera- 
tion, 13-31 October, 
1918 1 4 90 

Argonne-Meuse Opera- 
tion, 5-10 November, 
1918 .i r.. ; 2 25 2,000 

Totals : 9! 16 25 470 2,000 



F. 

TOTAL CASUALTIES OF THE RAINBOW DIVISION TO 

DATE 

Enlisted 
Officers Men. 

Killed 56 1,913 

Died from wounds 29 442 

Severely wounded 79 2,061 

Slightly wounded 124 5,033 

Gassed 90 2,563 

Missing 279 

Prisoners 3 41 



Totals 381 12,332 



250 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

G. 

TOTAL DEPTH OF ADVANCE MADE BY RAINBOW DI- 
VISION IN EACH OFFENSIVE ACTION 

Kilometers 
A dvcmced 

Ch&teau-Thierry Operation 17 

St. Mihiel Salient Operation 19 

Argonne-Meuse Operation, 13-31 October, 1918 ... 2 

Argonne-Meuse Operation, 5-10 November, 1918 . . , : 19 

Total 67 



APPENDIX IV 

CITATIONS and COMMENDATIONS 

6th Army Corps 

Staff, H. Q., June 15, 1918. 

1st Bureau, 

No. 3243-1 

GENERAL ORDERS NO. 50 

At the moment when the 42nd U. S. Infantry Division is leav- 
ing the Lorraine front, the Commanding General of the 6th Army 
Corps desires to do homage to the fine military qualities which 
it has continuously exhibited, and to the services which it has ren- 
dered in the Baccarat sector. 

The offensive ardor, the sense for the utilizations and the or- 
ganizations of terrain as for the liaison of the arms, the spirit 
of method, the discipline shown by all its officers and men, the 
inspirations animating them, prove that at the first call, they can 
henceforth take a glorious place in the new line of battle. 

The Commanding General of the 6th Army Corps expresses his 
deepest gratitude to the 42nd Division for its precious collabora- 
tion; he particularly thanks the distinguished Commander of this 



Appendix IV 251 

Division, General Menoher, the Officers under his orders and his 
Staff so brilliantly directed by Colonel MacArthub. 

It is with a sincere regret that the entire 6th Army Corps sees 
the 42nd Division depart. But the bonds of affectionate com- 
radeship which have been formed here will not be broken, for us, 
in faithful memory, are united the living and the dead of the 
Rainbow Division, those who are leaving for hard combats and 
those who, after having nobly sacrificed their lives on the land 
of the East, now rest there, guarded over piously by France. 

These sentiments of warm esteem will be still more deeply af- 
firmed during the impending struggles where the fate of Free 
Peoples is to be decided. 

May our units, side by side, contribute valiantly to the triumph 
of Justice and of Right. 

General Duport, 
Commanding the 6th Army Corps. 
(Signed) Duport. 

HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION 

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 

17 July, 1918. 
Memorandum : 

The following letter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental 
and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec- 
tive commands: 
4th Army, 

21st Army Corps, H. Q., July 15th, 1918. 

Staff, 

1st Bureau, 
No. 4343/1 

From General Naulin, 

Commanding 21st Army Corps. 
To 13th, 43d, 170th Inf. Divs., 42nd U. S. Inf. 
Div., and Artillery. 

General Gouraud this evening expressed his high satisfaction 
with the success attained by the 21st Army Corps during the 
stern but glorious day of July 15th. 



252 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Kindly transmit to the units under your command the sincere 
congratulations of the Commanding General of the Army, and 
my own personal gratitude for the admirable tenacity of the 
21st Army Corps and all the elements attached to it on this oc- 
casion. 

The German has clearly broken his sword on our lines. What- 
ever he may do in the future, he shall not pass. 

(Signed) S. Naulin. 

By command of Major General Menoher: 

Douglas MacArthur, 
Brigadier General, General Staff, 
Chief of Staff. 
Official: 

Walter E. Powers, 

Major, N. G., Adjutant General, 

Division Adjutant. 



HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION 

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 

17 July, 1918. 
Memorandum : 

The following letter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental 
and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec- 
tive commands: 
4th Army, 

Staff, Army H.Q., July 16, 1918. 

3rd Bureau, 
No. 6954/3 

SOLDIERS OF THE 4TH ARMY 

During the day of July 15th, you broke the effort of 15 Ger- 
man Divisions supported by 10 others. 

They were expected, according to their orders, to reach the 
Marne in the evening. You stopped their advance clearly at the 
point where we desired to engage in and win the battle, 



Appendix IV 253 

You have the right to be proud, heroic infantrymen and ma- 
chine gunners of the advance posts who signaled the attack and 
disintegrated it, aviators who flew over it, battalions and bat- 
teries which broke it, staffs which so minutely prepared the bat- 
tlefield. 

It is a hard blow for the enemy. It is a beautiful day for 
France. 

I count on you that it may always be the same, every time he 
dares to attack you, and with all my heart of a soldier, I thank 
you. Gotjraud. 



HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION 

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 

18 July, 1918. 
Memorandum : 

The following letter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental 
and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec- 
tive commands: 
21st Army Corps, 

170th Division, July 17, 1918. 

Staff, 

3rd Bureau, 
No. 1517/3 

General Bernhard, commanding par interum the 170th Divi- 
sion. — To the Commanding General of the 42nd, U. S. Infantry 
Division. 

The Commanding General of the 170th Infantry Division de- 
sires to express to the Commanding General of the 42nd U. S. 
Infantry Division his keen admiration for the courage and bravery 
of which the American Battalions of the 83rd Brigade have given 
proof in the course of the hard fighting of the 15th and 16th of 
July, 1918, as also for the effectiveness of the artillery fire of 
the 42nd U. S. Infantry Division. 

In these two days the troops of the United States, by their 
tenacity, largely aided their French comrades in breaking the 
repeated assaults of the 7th Reserve Division, the 1st Infantry 



254< The Story of the Rainbow Division 

Division and the Dismounted Guard Division of the Germans; 
these latter two divisions are among the best of Germany. 

According to the orders captured on the German officers made 
prisoner, their staff wished to take Chalons-sur-Marne on the 
evening of July 16, but it had reckoned without the valor of the 
American and French combatants who told them with machine 
gun, rifle and cannon, that they would not pass. 

The Commanding General of the 170th Infantry Division is 
therefore particularly proud to observe that in mingling their 
blood gloriously on the Battlefield of Champagne, the Ameri- 
cans and the French of today are continuing the magnificent tra- 
ditions established a century and a half ago by Washington and 
LaFayette; it is with this sentiment that he salutes the Noble 
Flag of the United States in thinking of the final Victory. 

Bernard. 



HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION 

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 

20 July, 1918. 
Memorandum No. 242. 

The following order of the 21st Army Corps is published for 
the information of all concerned. 
21st Army Corps, 

Staff, H. Q., July 19, 1918. 

3rd Bureau, 
No. 2,595/3. 

GENERAL ORDER 

At the moment when the 42nd American Division is on the 
point of leaving the 21st Army Corps, I desire to express my 
keen satisfaction and my sincere thanks for the services which it 
has rendered under all conditions. 

By its valor, ardor and its spirit, it has very particularly dis- 
tinguished itself on July 15 and 16 in the course of the great 
battle where the 4th Army broke the German offensive on the 
Champagne front. 

I am proud to have had it under my orders during this period; 



Appendix IV 255 

my prayers accompany it in the great struggle engaged in for the 
liberty of the World. 

General Naulin, 
Commanding the 21st Army Corps. 
Official: 

The Chief of Staff. 
(Signed) 
By command of Major General Menoher: 

Douglas MacArthur, 
Brigadier General, General Staff, 
Chief of Staff. 
Walter E. Powers, 
Major, N. G., Adjutant General, 
Division Adjutant. 



6th Army, P. C, 26 July, 1918. 

Chief of Staff, 
3rd Bureau, 
No. 2,283. 

NOTE 

The President of the Republic, in the course of a visit to the 
6th Army, expressed his satisfaction over the results obtained, as 
well as for the qualities of valor and perseverance manifested. 

The Commanding General of the 6th Army is happy to transmit 

to the troops of his army the felicitations of the President of 

the Republic. 

(Signed) General Degoutte. 

* * * * # 

6th Army, P. C, 26 July, 1918. 

Chief of Staff, 
3rd Bureau, 

No. 2,284/3 

NOTE 

The Commanding General of the 6th Army brings to the no- 
tice of all troops of the Army the following resolution voted by 
the Mayors of the Arrondissement of Meaux on the 20th of July, 
1918: 



256 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

The Mayors of the Arrondissement of Meaux, meeting on the 
20th of July, 1918, are happy to hail the splendid victory of the 
6th Army, which has at the time of the battle of the Marne, 
saved their communes from the invasion which menaced them. 

Convey to the valiant troops of the 6th Army the sincere ex- 
pression of their gratitude and their admiration. 

The President of the Congress of Mayors, 
(Signed) G. Rttgel, 

Mayor of Meaux, 
Deputy of Seine-et-Marne. 
The Commanding General of the 6th Army is happy to com- 
municate these felicitations to the troops of his army. 

(Signed) General Degoutte. 

HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION 

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 

31 July, 1918. 
Memorandum No. 246. 

The following letter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental 
and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec- 
tive commands. 

HEADQUARTERS FIRST ARMY CORPS 

July 28th, 1918. 
From: Commanding General, 1st Army Corps, Am. E. F. 
To: Commanding General, 42nd Division, Am. E. F. 

Subject: Congratulations. 

1. The return of the 42nd Division to the 1st Army Corps was 
a matter of self-congratulation for the Corps commander, not only 
because of previous relations with the Division, but also because 
of the crisis which existed at the time of its arrival. 

2. The standard of efficient performance of duty which is domi- 
nated by the Commander-in-Chief, Am. E. F., is a high one, 
involving as it does on an occasion such as the present complete 
self-sacrifice on the part of the entire personnel, and a willing- 
ness to accept cheerfully every demand even to the limit of en- 
durance of the individual for the sake of the Cause for which 
we are in France. 



Appendix IV 257 

3. The taking over of the front of the 1st Army Corps under 
the conditions of relief and advance, together with the attendant 
difficulty incident to widening the front was in itself no small 
undertaking, and there is added to this your advance in the face 
of the enemy to a depth of five or more kilometers, all under 
cover of darkness, to the objective laid down by higher authority 
to be attained, which objective you are holding, regardless of the 
efforts of the enemy to dislodge you. The Corps Commander is 
pleased to inform you that the 42nd Division has fully measured 
up to the high standard above referred to, and he reiterates his 
self-congratulation that you and your organization are again a 
part of the 1st Army Corps, Am. E. F. 

(Signed) H. Liggett, 

Major General, U. S. A. 
By command of Major General Menoher: 

Douglas MacArthur, 
Brigadier General, General Staff, 
Chief of Staff. 
Official: 

Walter E. Powers, 

Major, N. G., Adjutant General, 

Division Adjutant. 

HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION 

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 

6 August, 1918. 
Memorandum No. 258. 

II. The following General Order is furnished Brigade, Regi- 
mental and Separate Battalion Commanders for publication to 
their respective organizations: 
G. A. R., 

Etat Major, H. Q., August 4th, 1918. 

3rd Bureau, 
No. 4,190. 

general order 

The second battle of the Marne ends, like the first in a victory. 
The Chateau-Thierry pocket exists no more. 



258 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

The Vlth and Xth Armies, also the allied troops fighting at 
their side, have taken a glorious part in the battle. 

Their swift and powerful entrance in the battle, on July 18th, 
had, as a first result, to entirely break up the offensive of the 
enemy, and compelled him to retreat across the Marne. 

Since that time, owing to our strong attacks, and chased night 
and day, without stop, he has been forced to fall back across the 
Vesle, leaving in our hands 25,000 prisoners, 600 guns, 4,000 ma- 
chine guns, 500 minenwerfers. 

We owe these results to the energy and skill of the Chiefs, and 
to the extraordinary valor of the troops, who, for more than 15 
days, had to march and fight without rest. 

I am sending to the Commanders of the Xth and Vlth Armies, 
Generals Mangin and Degotjtte, to the Commanders of the Brit- 
ish and American units, and to all the troops, the token of my 
admiration for their knowledge, their courage, their heroic tenacity. 

They may all be proud of the work accomplished. It is great 
because it has greatly contributed to secure the final victory for 
us, and to bring it much nearer. 

(Signed) Fayolije. 

Official: The Chief of Staff: 

(Signed) P alette. 



HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION 

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 

13 August, 1918. 
Memorandum No. 261. 

The following General Order, 6th (French) Army, is published 
to this Command: 
6th Army P. C, 9 August, 1918. 

GENERAL ORDER 

Before the great offensive of the 18th of July, the American 
Troops forming part of the 6th French Army distinguished them- 
selves in capturing from the enemy the Bois de la Brigade de 
Marine and the village of Vaux, in stopping his offensive on the 
Marne and at Fossoy. 



Appendix IV 259 

Since then, they have taken the most glorious part in a second 
battle of the Marne, rivaling in order and in valiance the French 
troops. They have in twenty days of incessant combat, liber- 
ated numerous French villages and realized across a difficult coun- 
try an advance of forty kilometers which has carried them be- 
yond the Vesle. 

Their glorious marches are marked by names which will illus- 
trate in the future the military history of the United States. 
Torcy-Belleatt, Plateau d'Etrepilly, Epieds, La Charmel, 
L'Ourcq, Seringes-et-Nesles, Sergy, La Vesle and Fismes. 

The new divisions who were under fire for the first time showed 
themselves worthy of the war-time traditions of the Regular Army. 
They have had the same ardent desire to fight the Boche, the 
same discipline by which an order given by the Chief is always 
executed, whatever be the difficulties to overcome and the sacri- 
fices to undergo. 

The magnificent result so obtained are due to the energy and 
skill of the Chiefs, and to the bravery of the soldiers. 

I am proud to have commanded such troops. 

The General Commanding the 6th Army, 

Degoutte. 



HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION 

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES, FRANCE 

13 August, 1918. 
To the Officers and Men of the 42nd Division: 

A year has elapsed since the formation of your organization. 
It is, therefore, fitting to consider what you have accomplished 
as a combat division and what you should prepare to accom- 
plish in the future. 

Your first elements entered the trenches in Lorraine on Feb- 
ruary 21st; you served on that front for 110 days. You were 
the first American Division to hold a divisional sector and when 
you left the sector June 21st, you had served continuously as a 
division in the trenches for a longer time than any other Ameri- 



260 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

can Division. Although you entered the sector without experi- 
ence in actual warfare, you so conducted yourselves as to win the 
respect and affection of the French veterans with whom you 
served. Under gas bombardment, in raids, in patrols, in the heat 
of hand to hand combat and in the long dull hours of trench 
routine so trying to a soldier's spirit, you bore yourselves in a 
manner worthy of the traditions of our country. 

You were withdrawn from Lorraine and moved immediately to 
the Champagne front where during the critical days from July 
14th to July 18th, you had the honor of being the only American 
Division to fight in General Gourattd's Army which so gloriously 
obeyed his order, "We will stand or die," and by its iron defense 
crushed the German assault and made possible the offensive of 
July 18th to the west of Reims. 

From Champagne you were called to take part in exploiting 
the success north of the Marne. Fresh from the battle front 
before Chalons, you were thrown against the picked troops of 
Germany. For eight consecutive days, you attacked skillfully 
prepared positions. You captured great stores of arms and 
munitions, you forced the crossings of the Oxmca. You took 
Hill 212, Serge, Meurcy Ferme and Seringes by assault. You 
drove the enemy, including an Imperial Guard Division, before 
you for a depth of fifteen kilometers. When your infantry was 
relieved, it was in full pursuit of the retreating Germans, and 
your artillery continued to progress and support another Ameri- 
can Division in the advance to the Vesle. 

For your services in Lorraine, your Division was formerly 
commended in General Orders by the French Army Corps under 
which you served. For your services in Champagne, your as- 
sembled officers received the personal thanks and commendation 
of General Gourattd himself. For your services on the Ottrcq, 
your Division was officially complimented in a letter from the 
Commanding General, 1st Army Corps, of July 28th, 1918. 

To your success, all ranks and all services have contributed, 
and I desire to express to every man in the command my ap- 
preciation of his devoted and courageous effort. 



Appendix IV 261 

However, our position places a burden of responsibility upon 
us which we must strive to bear steadily forward without fal- 
tering. To our comrades who have fallen, we owe the sacred obli- 
gation of maintaining the reputation which they died to estab- 
lish. The influence of our performance on our allies and on our 
enemies cannot be overestimated for we were one of the first 
divisions sent from our country to show the world that Americans 
can fight. 

Hard battles and long campaigns lie before us. Only by 
ceaseless vigilance and tireless preparation can we fit ourselves 
for them. I urge you, therefore, to approach the future with 
confidence but above all with firm determination that so far as 
it is in your power, to spare no effort whether in training or in 
combat to maintain the record of our division and the honor of 
our country. 

Charles T. Menoher, 
Major General, U. S. A., 
Commanding. 



HEADQUARTERS FOURTH ARMY CORPS 

AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES, FRANCE 
GENERAL ORDER NO. 5 

13 September, 1918. 

1. The Fourth Corps has defeated the enemy and driven him 
back on the whole Corps Front. All objectives were reached be- 
fore the time prescribed in orders, a large number of prisoners 
and a considerable amount of booty captured. The rapid advance 
of the Corps, in conjunction with the action of the other ele- 
ments of the First Army, rendered the St. Mihiel salient unten- 
able to the enemy, who has retreated. 

2. The greatest obstacles to the advance was thought to be the 
enemy wire which presented a problem that caused anxiety to all 
concerned. The Corps Commander desires to express in particu- 
lar his admiration of the skill shown by the small groups in the 
advance battalions and their commanders in' crossing the hostile 
wire, in general to express his appreciation of tfc.i high spirit and 



262 The Story of the Rainbow Division 

daring shown by the troops, and the rapidity and efficiency with 
which the operation was conducted. 

By command of Major General Dickman: 

Stuart Heintzelman, 
Chief of Staff. 



Official: 



Philip L. Schuyler, 
Major, Infantry, 
Adjutant. 



HEADQUARTERS 4th ARMY CORPS 

15 September, 1918. 
general order no. 7 
The Corps Commander is pleased to transmit to the command 
the following telegram received by the Commander-in-Chief: 

"My dear General. The First American Army under your 
command on the first day has won a magnificent victory by a 
maneuver as skillfully prepared as it was valiantly acted. I ex- 
tend to you as well as to the officers and to the troops under your 
command my warmest compliments. 

"Marshal Foch." 



HEADQUARTERS 4th ARMY CORPS 

September 17, 1918. 

GENERAL ORDERS NO. 8 

The Corps Commander takes great pride in repeating the fol- 
lowing telegram received by him from the Commander-in-Chief 
of the American Expeditionary Forces: 

"Please accept my sincere congratulations on the successful and 
important part taken by the officers and men of the IV Corps 
in the first offensive of the First American Army on September 
12th and 13th, 1918. The courageous dash and vigor of our 
troops has thrilled our countrymen and evoked the enthusiasm of 









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